


Iceni Prayers

by CalamityOS



Category: God of War (Video Games), Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Ancient History, F/M, Slow Build, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, mentions of rape/non-con
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-03-06 20:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 19
Words: 39,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18858721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalamityOS/pseuds/CalamityOS
Summary: “This machine sounds very powerful,” Kratos said. He was looking her right in the eyes; he had to see her tears, but he did not respond to them. “If it can exist, why cannot gods exist?”Aloy felt her face fold into a grimace. “This again?” she hissed hotly.“I am trying to understand,” Kratos said. His voice sounded subtly kinder, and his face had softened more than she’d ever seen it. It, too, caught her off guard.“That machine is very powerful,” she said, though she couldn’t keep the frustration out of her voice. “The Nora think it is so powerful they worship it as a goddess. They call it All-Mother.” She practically spat the last words. “But it’s not a goddess. It was made by humans; it just does what it was told to do. The Nora just don’t understand it, so they call it a goddess.” She shut her eyes tight, the tears no longer flowing, the lump that had grown in her throat having melted into something angrier, less vulnerable. “Gods exist when humans turn something inexplicable into something magical, just to make the world simpler.”SPOILERS possible for both games; the story takes place after the events of both of them





	1. The Meeting

Aloy saw a track and, as she bent low to examine it, recognized it as one of the new animals she had encountered since coming here. Deer, she thought to herself, big enough to make a profit on the meat. The imprint of the hoof in the mud gave her a direction and a distance, and she was quickly off in pursuit, stalking through the underbrush as quickly as a quiet gait would allow.

Her senses were tuned to find her prey before it noticed her, but her mind wandered aimlessly as her years of training kept her feet. As she peered through the low branches and heard small creatures scatter through the underbrush at her approach, Aloy couldn’t help but wonder inwardly about her strange surroundings. She had been in this new place for only a matter of days, and the similarities between here and home were enough that the foreignness could still sometimes catch her off guard. Deer were new, for one thing. They looked like a cross between a grazer and a charger, but they were so much smaller, and of course, they were animals instead of machines. 

Machines were another thing. The landscape felt strangely quiet and ominous without the herds of striders and tramplers, or the occasional sawtooth or behemoth. Aloy had never really thought about how much she relied on machines for things other than useful parts. The different kinds of machines had oriented her in space by alerting her when she was moving to Oseram or Carja or Banuk territories. Even though it had only been a short time since she’d learned to override machines, she’d grown accustomed to using them to cover long distances. And while she’d professed to hate the attention, she had gotten used to being recognized in the larger towns and cities where she went, recognized as the girl who tamed the machines; it helped to have clout in new places.

And here she had none. When she’d found herself in these woods four days ago, delivered here by unknown forces after climbing down what she thought was a mountain in the northern Sundom, she’d quickly learned how lost she felt without her reputation. Nora Anointed, Machine wrangler, Savior at the Sun spire: no matter how little thought she gave to her various names, they had protected her, parted crowds for her, given her food and lodging in new places. And here she’d so far had none of that.

The distant crack! of a twig underfoot snapped Aloy fully back to her present task. She immediately stopped in her tracks and scanned the area in the direction of the sound. Sure enough, an eight-point stag stood quartering away from Aloy, its head inclined to the ground in search of the next bite. Aloy felt her heart jump in her throat as the thrill of the hunt took over. As quietly as she could, she knocked an arrow into her bow and drew it back to her cheek. From her vantage point, she had a clear shot straight into most of the vital organs. She exhaled deeply and held her lungs empty, steadying her hand and drawing the arrow the final few inches before loosing it. It struck true, and the beast made a pathetic warning moan as it fell into a kneel. Aloy heard the sounds of other large animals taking off deeper into the woods. Her heart leapt again, and the adrenaline of success pushed her into a sudden sprint towards her trophy.

When she arrived at the point where the deer had fallen, she could hear its labored breathing and felt a pang of guilt. She preferred a clean kill; these animals were so much larger than what she was used to, but it still felt like a failure not to kill in one hit. She took her knife from her boot and gave the creature a quick end, driving the blade deeper into the heart than the arrow had managed to go. She felt the last breath heave out of the stag, and its life along with it. “Thank you,” she whispered. That, too, was new.

She knew she couldn’t carry the whole carcass back with her, so she began to cut the best meats from the bone as the butcher had shown her. She wrapped each piece in paper and packed into her satchel, stacking and stuffing them so she could carry more. 

Aloy had been slicing and packing for more than a quarter of an hour before she felt eyes on her. She did not move immediately, but instead listened hard for clues as to who or what was nearby, watching. After a moment, she decided whatever it was was being too still to be an animal predator, and too close to be an animal prey. She gripped her knife tightly and, taking a quick breath, spun as she stood.

“Show yourself,” she said firmly into the trees. She needn’t have; the man was already visible, about twenty paces off, situated between two trees in what appeared to be a cautious, if not fully defensive stance. Aloy could not see a weapon, but she did not lower her blade: the man’s arms alone were large enough to be weapons unto themselves.

They stared into each other’s eyes for a moment, quickly analyzing whatever threat might be there. He was an older man with a neat but bushy beard. He was marked with paint or perhaps a tattoo that, from what Aloy could see, coiled itself around his body like a constricting snake. He wore gauntlets and a belted shoulder armor of furs and leather, all of which covered less than a third of his upper body. As he stood there, tense and searching, Aloy surprised herself when she felt familiar jolt of adrenaline just looking at him. The thrill of the hunt, she thought to herself without fully understanding why.

“Are you alone?” Aloy called to him, stealing quick glances to her left and right. 

He said nothing, but she saw his face relax. Her obvious caution seemed to have reassured or calmed him, which in turn calmed her. She lowered her blade a few inches. He lowered his fists and stood straighter.

Aloy glanced back at the stag on the forest floor behind her. “If it’s meat you want, you can have what’s left.” She didn’t think he looked particularly needy, but she knew she hadn’t seen him in town so he could be low on supplies. Without turning from him, she reached behind her and grabbed the strap of her satchel, pulling it over her head. “If you follow me, I will know,” she said darkly. “So don’t follow me.”

Her bag was painfully heavy, and she had to shift it considerably as she stood and backed slowly away. The whole time, he watched her go but didn’t so much as move his head. Once she felt she was at a safe distance, she turned and peeled off into a sprint, back the way she came, stabilizing her satchel to her side with one arm as she ran. She didn’t stop until she was on the edge of the forest.

Once she was clear of the trees and could see the road back to town, she stopped and bent at the waist, holding the stitch in her side with one hand and supporting herself on her knee with the other, her bag hanging low to the ground. She kept looking behind her compulsively, though she was certain the man hadn’t followed her.

She’d couldn’t remember anyone so threatening as he had looked, and yet he didn’t seem any more aggressive towards her than she had been towards him.

He, too, was in that forest for survival. He, too, was on his guard. He reminded her of the Nora who became outcasts: always anxious, sometimes frightened, never fully prepared. And there was something else, too, a feeling Aloy had grown all too familiar with in the past few days, an emotion she felt she could read in the way the man had looked at her: grief, not for a person or a place, but for an understanding. Grief over the loss of knowing what you could expect from your world. Grief over the ground that has fallen away under you, leaving you exposed and vulnerable. It was a feeling the other outcasts had always had, but Aloy hadn’t truly experienced until she had come here, wherever here was. She had never really felt “home” anywhere anymore, but she now knew what it felt like to be “un-home.” And, she thought maybe the man in the forest did, as well.


	2. The Butcher

Aloy was awake well before she opened her eyes. The bed wasn’t much, but the small room with walls and a roof was much easier to sleep in than had been the unfamiliar woods with their strange creatures, an untold number of which could kill Aloy before she even knew they were there. As long as she entered this odd, circular hut after dark and left early in the morning, no one seemed too fussed about her coming and going. The house clearly belonged to someone, though by the state of things, they hadn’t been inside in weeks, possibly longer. One day Aloy’s luck would wear out and they would come back, but it hadn’t been today, so she counted her blessings.

Light from the small slits in the thatched roof streamed in through the dusty air and fell across Aloy’s shoulders, warming her. She raised her palms to her eyes and rubbed the sleep from them, stretching her back and arms, which had tightened overnight after the long trek back to town with her overstuffed bag of deer meat. Every ache was worth it, though, considering she was running out of arrows and had no easy way to make more for herself without the machines around. She feared she might have to go so far as to craft or buy an entirely new bow, one she didn’t fully understand, in a form she wouldn’t feel comfortable entrusting her life to. That would, of course, be a last resort. She would first find what materials she could to make arrows that worked with her own bow.

Aloy sat up and swung her feet onto the cool, hard-packed mud of the floor. Aloy had dared only a small fire in the kiln in the center of the room, though some of the nights had been cold enough to tempt her to try something larger. She splashed water on her face from the ceramic bowl she’d kept filled by the door, pulled her scratchy woolen tunic on over her shrift and belted it, and then pulled on her blazon tights and boots. She quickly tied her money pouch and her mostly empty quiver to hang at her waist, and then strapped her bow to her back as she ducked into the doorway.

From the shadow cast by the thick door frame, Aloy surveyed the surrounding area. When she was comfortable she wasn’t going to be spotted in the thin light of the early morning, she slid carefully out and jogged out to the edge of the settlement.

The butcher’s house was not far, and while she turned and took a twisted path to get there, she was sure he knew where she came from. The village was not large—Aloy estimated there weren’t more than three or four extended families—and some people had definitely seen her walking nearby. But the first day after she had discovered the village, she had brought in a boar carcass to trade for some supplies and the clothes she now wore, and this action seemed to ingratiate her to the people. Especially the butcher.

“Not a lot of hunters ‘round here fixin’ to fight one of those sons of bitches by themselves,” he’d said, roughly wiping his forehead with the back of one hairy arm. “And none of those fixin’ to unload the meat. I’ll take whatever you can give me, girlie.”

She hadn’t loved the interaction, but until she found her way home, she’d take what kindness she could get.

She walked now to his house on the outskirts of the village. Sure enough, he was already waiting outside as she approached.

“Oy there,” he called, needlessly loudly, back-lit by the rising sun. “You didn’t tell me you had a partner.” He was waving something long and thin over his head with an almost comic amount of enthusiasm. As Aloy came closer, she squinted into the light to see what it was. When she could see enough details, her heart stopped in her chest for a moment.

The antlers.

“Where’d you get those?” she asked, trying to maintain an even voice. She wasn’t usually good at hiding her thoughts from her face, but the butcher didn’t seem to notice.

“Off the stag you sold me yesterday, I’d guess.” When she was close enough, he tossed her one of the set. Its heft surprised her. “If I hadn’t seen the freshness of the meat myself, I’d’ve thought you’d brought me some half-rotten carrion and this boy’d just brought the rest in this morning.”

Aloy examined the antler in her hand. It certainly looked like those on the deer from yesterday. It was the right size, anyway. “Someone’s already been to see you this morning? Isn’t it early?” She tossed the antler back to him.

“Ah, but this boy’s an early riser, see. You takin’ orders in the morning and bring goods back at night. He’s the other way ‘round.”

“And you’d call him a boy?” Surely he wasn’t describing the man she’d seen in the forest.

“I thought for certain he was yeh little brother or sum’in, ‘specially after this. ‘Cept I asked him ‘bout you this morning and he looked about as confused as you do right now.” He scratched his beard with the tip of the antler. “Yeh know, maybe I shouldn’t’ve said nothin’. Could play yeh off each other if I’d’ve been thinkin straight.”

“Where did he go, after he spoke to you?” She turned towards the forest in the distance, as if she might be able to see a figure stalking off that direction if she looked fast enough.

“Nah, he’s got business in town I think.” The butcher gestured down the road Aloy had just walked up. When she turned immediately to follow where he’d pointed, he called after her, “Now, don’t kill him, now, girl. It’s jussa deer. ‘Nuf deer in that wood for ever’body, now.”

The man she’d met in the forest couldn’t come and go and escape her notice. Aloy figured he couldn’t come and go freely at all without drawing dangerous attention to himself. Whoever sold those antlers, if they were the same antlers, had to have met him too. Maybe they were even together somehow. It wasn’t much to go off of, but Aloy had had less than that for days. She needed information, any new information if she was going to get home.

Aloy had only had a handful of interactions with the villagers other than the butcher, and none of them had been particularly warm. She was used to notf itting in wherever she went, but she didn’t remember ever before experiencing the distrust and fear that rippled off these people like rain off a slicker. Now, as she strode quickly down the main road, she felt rather than saw the uncomfortable reaction from those she passed. She tapped her focus at her temple and it hopped to work with a high-pitched chirp.

* * *

She tried not to look anyone in the eye as she scanned faces for any sign of another stranger, a person who, like her, didn’t belong.

It was the intricate tattoos on his hands that caught her eye. Like her, he had found clothes that matched those around him, but he hadn’t even tried to cover up the thin lines and scrawling glyphs that ran up his fingers and arms. Her focus lit them up and translated them; she recognized them as hunters’ blessings, with phrases like “Strong arm” and “lucky shot.” He had a bow strapped to his back, a quiver full of arrows slung over his shoulder. But he was a boy, Aloy noticed, her stomach dropping slightly. Probably no more than 15 years old. Still, she had to ask.

He stood with a woman at the door to what was likely her hut. They were examining an animal hide of some kind. The woman noticed Aloy’s approach, and when he saw the concern in her eyes, the boy turned.

“Good morning,” he said. He seemed to look through her, almost into her somehow as he spoke to her. “You must be the huntress the butcher spoke of.” His face was kind and cheery, but she could hear the wariness in his voice.

“You must be the boy who sold him the antlers off my stag.”

“Now, now,” he said with a small but hesitant smile, “I was told you were done with it.”

She stopped walking and stood a few paces from him. She could sense him silently taking stock of her and of their environment. She didn’t want him to feel trapped.

“I was hoping…” Aloy glanced at the woman still standing in front of her house holding the animal hide. “I was hoping we could…talk about that.”

He seemed to understand her unspoken request, as he briefly turned back to the woman and excused himself. He stepped forward towards Aloy, but maintained more than an arm’s distance between them.

“You don’t look like one of the locals,” he noted.

“I could say the same to you,” she said. “Who is the man?” The words spilled from her before she could think of any alternatives. “In the woods. Do you know him?”

The boy didn’t respond immediately. She thought he seemed to be calculating something, or maybe he was measuring her in some way. She glanced at the woman again who was openly staring at them, her eyebrows knit together in anxiety.

“We should get out of their way,” the boy said, looking at the rest of the people around them. “Come with me.”

His authoritative tone surprised her, given his age, but she followed him back up the road she’d just come down, up towards the butcher’s house. They slowed down as they reached the end of the row of houses, where what had been a road dissolved into merely a worn patch of ground like the mouth of river. Aloy wanted to wait for him to continue their conversation, but she found this silence infuriating.

“The part I don’t understand is the lie,” he said suddenly, coming to a stop but not looking at her. He faced the woods, and Aloy followed his eyes but saw nothing.

“I don’t think I’ve spoken enough to have had time to lie,” she said after a moment.

“Not you,” he said, shaking his head. “He told me he’d found the deer half eaten. But the butcher said the meat was fresh.”

Aloy couldn’t keep straight what he was saying. “It was fresh,” she insisted. “I killed the deer myself.”

“And you saw him. So he had to have known.”

Aloy’s heart leapt unexpectedly. “Who is he?” she asked again. “How do you know him?”

“He’s none of your concern,” the boy hissed at her. Once again, Aloy was surprised at the confidence in his voice, but this time also at the harsh tone there.

“I don’t want to hurt him,” she said quickly.

The boy laughed. “You couldn’t if you tried.”

Aloy shrugged. “Fair.”

“He tried to keep me from knowing about you,” he said, almost as if he was speaking to himself.

“I just want to talk to him,” she said. She fought with herself internally for a moment, and then added, “Both of you. I…I’m lost. I don’t know how I got here and…well, it sort of looked like he didn’t either. And now you, too.” Aloy shook her head. So many clues but none that made sense. “I thought maybe he…maybe one of you might know something that could help me.”

“You might try seeing this from my perspective,” he said. He turned to face her. “You met this man, this man I thought was hiding, this man who is usually uncannily good at hiding. And he had every opportunity to tell me that you met him, to warn me that you might find out about me or come looking for me in town. But he didn’t. And now you’re asking about him and you want to talk to him and I’m supposed to trust you when I just learned I can’t trust him.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t have to doubt your motives to be concerned about the number of deceptions and coincidences in this situation.”

Impatience burned at the back of Aloy’s throat. “Look, I don’t know who you are, or who he is, or how you know him or why you trust him. I would love the freedom to care about deceptions and coincidences and strange men hiding out in the woods, but right now I need answers, and you’re keeping me from them.” By muscle memory, she brought her hand to the bow strapped to her back.

With lightning speed, the boy drew his bow, knocked an arrow, and pointed it directly into her eyes, staring down the length of it with a sparking energy in his eyes that seemed supernatural.

“Hands off,” he said darkly.

Aloy regarded him for a moment, considering her options, but then raised her hands in surrender. “Sorry,” she said.

He lowered his bow slowly, considering her with his eyes still lit as if from within.

“I won’t take you to where he’s staying,” he said after a long moment. She could tell he was going to say more so she did not interrupt, but he took his time. “Meet me at dusk at the edge of the wood.” He pointed with his tattooed fingers, holding his bow and arrow down at his side. “We’ll have a fire set so you’ll find us.”

“You’ve been acting so worried all this time, but why should I trust you?” She gestured towards his bow. “Clearly either one of you could kill me.”

The boy smirked a little and shrugged as he backed away, retreating towards the wood. “It has to mean something that we haven’t.” He turned and jogged away. She watched the him cross the plain and disappear at the edge of the trees. _It has to mean something_ , she agreed.

 


	3. The Lie

“Father!” He shouted into the trees, not caring what animals heard him and scampered away.

“Atreus?” The call back was softer than usual, as if he’d been sleeping before he heard Atreus’ voice. For some reason, that bothered Atreus as much as everything else.

“Father!” he shouted again. “Why didn’t you tell me about the woman?”

No response. Atreus stomped loudly through the underbrush. “Why did you tell me you found the deer?” No response. “Father!” He was getting closer to the clearing where they’d made camp. “I thought you said you would trust me!” He threw his hands in the air. “Hel, I thought you said I could trust you!”

“Atreus.” Kratos was standing next to the ashes of last night’s fire. Atreus could tell he was stretching his spine to its full length, towering over his son in that way that he had to work for now that Atreus was older. 

But Atreus wasn’t nearly intimidated. “She found me in the town. The butcher knew her. Who knows how long she’s been lurking around here. How many times have you met with her? How many other people have you met? What else aren’t you telling me?”

“Atreus!” Kratos shouted, his eyes flashing with internal fire.

Atreus went silent, only to allow his father to speak. Rage couldn’t cow him anymore. He wasn’t a little boy.

“It was only her,” Kratos said after a moment spent collecting himself. “I only saw her. Only the once. It has not happened before. It will not happen again.”

“You see that it does not,” Atreus shot back at him. Kratos seemed to wince a little at the words. Atreus let them sink in, leave whatever mark they would. He went to sit by what was left of the fire, unloading his equipment onto the ground around him. There was more to understand, more to discuss, but there was little point in continuing the theatrics of anger. If his father had taught him anything, it was how useless anger was in these situations. Atreus sighed deeply. “Just...why?” 

Kratos did not move. He continued to stand, his back to Atreus, his fists clenched at his sides. “I do not know,” he growled.

Atreus looked up at him, frowning deeply. “What?”

Kratos shook his head. “I…do not know why.” Atreus didn’t know what to say to this. “I…am sorry.”

Kratos was a man of few words, and Atreus was used to filling the silences himself. But this was odd. His father’s rage had not subsided, but Atreus knew it wasn’t directed at him. It was as if Kratos was stoking a fire that was burning his own skin.

“It’s okay,” Atreus said dumbly after a moment, hoping it might solve something. “She’s not dangerous, I don’t think,” he said. “Human,” he added, since he knew Kratos had a hard time distinguishing sometimes. Kratos didn’t say anything, and the silence had a quality in it that Atreus did not like. “She wants to talk to us,” he said. He pulled out his whetstone and knife to give himself somewhere to look other than his father’s broad back.

“Mmm,” Kratos growled.

“I told her we’d meet her at the edge of the forest tonight.”

Kratos turned his head. “You did?”

Atreus looked up at him. “Yeah,” he said, resisting the urge to lighten the tone with a shrug. “I don’t think she would have left me alone otherwise.” He looked back down at his knife. “And we need information, father. If she’s as desperate as we are, maybe we can help each other.” Kratos didn’t say anything. Atreus made small circles with his blade on the stone. “It’s sort of a gamble, I guess. But the people here don’t seem too fussed about gods, so I don’t know that we have to worry about people suspecting us. And as long as they don’t suspect us, they probably aren’t much danger to us, either.”

“Mmm,” Kratos growled again, lower this time. Darker.

Atreus stopped sharpening his knife. He took a breath to steady himself. There were a multitude of complex reasons for the one-sided conversations he sometimes had with his father, and he’d spent the past few years becoming an expert at differentiating those reasons. This one was less familiar, but he nonetheless recognized it. Moreso than the others, he did not have patience for this one.

“Why are you still standing there?” Atreus asked bluntly. 

Kratos didn’t say anything, but Atreus could see his father’s muscles relax, as if he had only just noticed they were tense. Slowly, he bent to sit on a rock he’d set next to the fire. He faced Atreus with his elbows on his knees and his eyes downcast.

“I’m fine.” Atreus said.

Kratos looked up at him, his eyes equal parts surprised and unconvinced.

“Not telling me was stupid,” Atreus said seriously, setting the flat of his blade gently on his knee and rubbing the whetstone absentmindedly with his thumb. “It was really stupid. But I didn’t get hurt and I wasn’t even really in danger. If you had told me, things probably would have gone more smoothly, but that’s done now. Can’t go back and change it.”

Kratos sighed, sending a small puff of air out his nostrils.

“I have a good reason to be upset with you,” Atreus said, quickly following up before Kratos could interrupt, “but I can’t be upset with you when you’re already beating yourself up about it.” He shook his head imploringly. “You made a mistake, you apologized, let’s figure out what’s next and move on to it.”

Kratos blinked. They were both silent for a long moment. It felt like a game of chicken, a game that they hadn’t played in a while, but a game that Atreus knew he could win if he just waited it out.

“Of course,” his father said at long last. “Let us move on, then.”

Atreus nodded. “Thank you,” he said, letting more of his exasperation into his voice than he’d intended. “Why don’t we start with you telling me the real story of the deer, so I’m not the only one out of the loop on that.”

Kratos tilted his head and cracked his neck, a nervous tick he sometimes did to give himself time to think. “I was tracking the herd through the forest for most of the morning, since you had told me the antlers were a good sell. I closed in on the stag, but before I could draw on it, she shot it first. She didn’t see me when she went to carve it up, so I stood there, not wanting to get her attention. But somehow, she knew I was there and she confronted me.” He shook his head and looked to the side, like he was reliving the moment in his head and feeling again the confusion or anxiety he’d felt then. “She was obviously scared, worried I wasn’t alone. She told me she’d give me the rest of the deer if I let her leave without following her, and then she ran off with what she’d already taken.” He stayed in the past for a moment after he finished talking, and Atreus couldn’t read his face.

“So you just didn’t say anything to her?” Atreus asked, though he wasn’t exactly surprised.

Kratos shook his head.

“If the butcher hadn’t guessed that the antlers matched the meat she’d sold him, none of this would have happened,” he said, coming to the realization as he said it. “She wouldn’t have recognized me as anyone, and I wouldn’t have gone looking for her.”

“I didn’t mean to keep the information from you,” Kratos said. “When you returned yesterday and asked about the rest of the deer, I do not know why I said what I did. But then I thought I would just tell you today.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before I left this morning?”

Kratos’ eyebrows were knit together. He shook his head.

“So you were going to tell me when I got back?” Atreus offered.

“Yes,” Kratos said, but he didn’t look confident in the answer.

Atreus watched his face for a moment. There was something he was missing, something new he hadn’t seen before, or if he had he couldn’t remember when. “Okay then,” he said, wanting to move on. “So she saw you, and then the butcher told her I’d sold him the antlers, so then she came to find me in town. And she asked about you. She asked who you were, how I knew you. She told me she wanted to talk to you.” Atreus blinked as he remembered the urgency in her voice. “She said she was lost and she had thought you were too.”

Atreus looked up to see Kratos’ eyes widen slightly. Maybe no one else would have noticed, but Atreus did. “What?” he asked in response.

Kratos paled a little at the recognition in Atreus’ voice. “It is nothing,” he said quickly. “It sounds...suspicious that she seems to be in a situation similar to

ours.”

“That’s what I thought, too.” Atreus said. “She didn’t seem to question it. She kept saying she ‘wanted answers,’ that she thought we might be able to combine our knowledge, such as it is.” He added the last with a little scoff. “No doubt that conversation is going to be a disappointment for her.”

“Do you suspect a trap?” Kratos asked.

The question surprised Atreus, only because Kratos didn’t usually consult with him on things like that. He usually just decided and proclaimed. “No,” he said. “I mean, she seemed vulnerable, and honestly, if I didn’t know us I’d say she was being reckless to come out here tonight.” Atreus shook his head. “No, I think she’s probably just scared. Flailing out like a drowning man grasping for something to float on.”

“Mmm.”

“What?”

Kratos looked up, genuinely confused. “What? Nothing. I trust your assessment.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” Kratos said. His face softened into the nearly-smile he seemed to reserve specifically for Atreus. “Of course.”

Atreus smiled back, albeit using more of his facial muscles. “Thank you.”

“I do trust you, Atreus,” he said again. “And you can trust me.”

Atreus picked up his knife and whetstone. “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! I finished both these games in the past year and didn't want to put the characters away. I started this without knowing really where it was going to go, so buckle up. Be prepared for the tags and ratings to change as needed.
> 
> I'll try to keep a regular Friday update schedule, but like I said, I'm flying blind here so we'll have to wait and see.
> 
> Any critiques or suggestions welcome!


	4. Cabin Fever

Aloy didn’t usually have much to do on any given day, and she spent most of her time filling space between sleeps. But today, the sun was even more achingly slow to move through the sky. To stay out of sight, she spent the day in the hut she slept in, which was a first. It didn’t get overly warm, but it still felt stuffy and stale. Carja apartments all had large open windows where, in Meridian, a person could see for miles all around. Even the slices of air between logs in Nora huts let in the breeze. There were no such comforts in the hut, and Aloy felt like she would think herself into an early grave. She kept expecting more time to have passed than what had, so whenever she went to the door to check on the light left in the day, she came back to sit on the bed, swearing under her breath.

This is what it would have been like if she had been outcast as an adult, instead of at birth, she thought vaguely. Rost had probably had days like this before the Matriarchs gave Aloy to him to raise. Especially in winter, when nothing grew and whatever food you had was whatever you were going to have, the days felt endless, even though the sunlight was fleeting. But she had never been alone like this anywhere else. As much as she had always been on her own, she had only rarely been alone.

It was maddening.

She tapped the focus at her temple. It chirped to attention, passively scanning the room while projecting a layered unreality in front of Aloy’s eyes. She swiped with her hand, and the layers rearranged so that the image she had taken yesterday of the butcher’s rough ledger sidled up next to the image she had from today of the boy’s tattooed arm. Aloy used her hands to move the light that made up the images, drawing them together so that she could carefully examine the glyphs side by side.

They looked nothing alike. It wasn’t just that they were written by different people; they didn’t look like they had any of the same shapes, and the translations the focus proposed were so wildly unrelated that Aloy had to assume they were different languages. Of course, neither of them was a language Aloy knew, and the Focus, though it translated the words for her, didn’t tell her where the languages came from. It was like having the lock and the key but no door to attach them to.

She swiped the layered images to the side and drew up the pictures of the animals in the fences behind some of the huts. “SHEEP/EWE” one was labeled. “PIG/SWINE/SOW” was another one. The pig looked sort of like the boars in the woods in the sacred lands, but it was fatter, with less muscle. “DEER/DOE/FAWN” was the label over an image she had taken of two deer in the woods. Doe was the mother deer, and fawn was the baby. She had a picture of the stag, but it was after she’d killed it. Aloy felt like a child, again, listening to Rost tell her stories and then reenacting them in the woods the next day. This is what it had felt like then; the world was new and there was everything to learn. Only then it wasn’t terrifying.

She swiped again to the side and the man’s white, bearded face appeared. She saw again the mixture of confusion, fear, and certainty in his expression, the look of a man who was backed nearly into a corner and wouldn’t hesitate to do what was necessary to survive. The sensation of adrenaline tickled her muscles, though it subtler now that she wasn’t standing in front of him and coming off the high of a successful kill. She tapped gently on the side of his face with her fingertips, tracing the thick red line that cut through and around his eye. _What sort of wound was that_ , she wondered. The focus chirped ineffectually and his face swam like a reflection in a rippling pond. He wasn’t a glyph or an animal; it couldn’t tell her more about him. 

Next to his face was the boy’s face, wearing the cautiously friendly look he’d had when she’d confronted him about the antlers. His face was scarred, too. Whole pieces seemed to be missing from various places. He’d obviously seen his share of danger and just barely made it out with his head still attached. Could she trust him? Did it matter?

Nervous, impotent energy raced through Aloy’s body. She let out a growl and angrily tapped the focus again to silence it. In the still, quiet dimness of the hut, her inescapable thoughts and questions returned to her, like glinthawks tearing at a machine’s corpse. She pushed herself into a standing position, and then, as if the blood rushing to her head had brought with it an old memory, she sat down again. Here she was, alone in a hut with nothing to do but wait. When she had been alone with Rost in their home in the winter, he wouldn’t let her sit and daydream or play with her focus. Until she could pull herself up the brave trails without his help, he had her run through her exercises twice a day, more if the weather was bad. Aloy rolled over onto her stomach, her hands flat on the ground underneath her shoulders.

“One,” she said as she quickly pushed her body upwards. She hadn’t done this in years.

 


	5. Negotiations

Kratos didn’t notice he was pacing until Atreus coughed loudly to get his attention for the third time in just a few minutes. Atreus leaned against the trunk of a young tree on the edge of the forest while Kratos stood out a ways, nearer the small fire they’d made. He was not accustomed to waiting or staying still, especially so out in the open.

“What’s your deal?” Atreus mumbled. “Can’t you sit down or something?”

Kratos grunted as response. Sitting was an impossibility at this point, but Kratos took the hint and knelt by the fire. He began running his fingers through the grass there, almost able to feel it dry underneath his skin as the heat from the fire drew out the moisture from within. He scanned the horizon towards the town. The nearest building was far away, but the land was flat enough that they should see the woman coming long before she made it to them. If she planned to meet them at dusk, she should be visible soon.

“What will we do if she does not come?” he said, noticing only at the last second that he had spoken aloud. 

“We need whatever she can give us, but don’t have much for her,” Atreus said with a sigh. “I’m almost more worried about what happens if she does come. If you’d consider the possibility of traveling with her--”

“We do not know if we can trust her,” Kratos cut him off. 

“The only thing we have to offer is protection on the road.”

“We do not know where that road is or where it leads. It is better to travel alone.”

“I’m just saying--”

“Atreus,” Kratos said sharply. “We travel alone.”

Atreus sighed again. Kratos could almost feel his son roll his eyes in adolescent exasperation. “Sure,” he said flatly. “Whatever.”

As the sun sunk lower below the horizon and the light took on a cool purplish hue, Kratos and Atreus maintained an uneasy silence. Kratos continued to stare uselessly in the direction of the town. He saw nothing and no one there.

Kratos stood again and walked slowly around the fire, mindful to keep his anxiety out of his gait. More than an hour had passed since proper dusk, and the sky was growing dark very quickly. “This is unwise,” he growled.

Suddenly, he heard rustling in the underbrush in the woods behind him. He turned quickly to see the woman stepping into the light from the fire, though carefully keeping a tree between her and them.

“What the hell!” Atreus shouted, drawing his bow and knocking an arrow. But she had her hands raised in surrender and her weapons were in their sheaths. 

Kratos raised an arm towards Atreus without taking his eyes of the woman. “Hold,” he said to her. “Why did you come this way?” he asked.

Her hands still raised, she stood still, though poised to run. “It seemed safer.” She looked at Kratos and their eyes met across the flames. A knot hitched in his gut as the waft of aromatic herbs brushed his consciousness again. “I didn’t want to walk alone, exposed, across the open field and risk an ambush.”

Atreus lowered his bow, but kept the arrow in place. “Are you satisfied then?” he asked. 

She stepped slowly forward. “For now,” she said.

They came together to stand awkwardly in a triangle around the fire. “My name is Aloy,” she said, speaking first after a moment of stiff silence loomed between them.

“I am Atreus,” Atreus said. “This is Kratos,” he gestured at his father.  

Dusk had passed and night was deepening fast. The small dancing flames cast disorienting shadows across her face as they spoke, but Kratos continually noticed she seemed to lock eyes with him whenever she had the opportunity. 

“How did you come to be here?” She asked. “And when?”

“Three days ago,” Atreus answered. “We were stalking a stag in the woods near our home, but when we turned a corner, we…” He shook his head and frowned, as though he was trying again to understand what had happened, “we were here.” 

“That’s what it was like for me, too,” she said, her voice full of something like relief. “Four days ago, I climbed up a mountain to collect something at the summit, and then when I came down, I was in these woods instead.”

“Do you…” Atreus seemed to hesitate. “Do you know where ‘here’ is?” 

Her face fell and Kratos saw her shoulders slump slightly. “I hoped you could tell me.”

Atreus shook his head. Awkward silence hovered around them.

“Well,” she said, “I don’t know about you,” she seemed to look Kratos up and down, measuring something about him, “but when we are is just as important to me as where we are.”

Kratos’ brow furrowed. “Explain,” he said. She took it as an invitation to speak directly to him.

“Well, I know that, wherever we are, we are not existing at the same time as I was four days ago on that mountain. It seems crazy, I know, but I just don’t think there’s another way to understand all the strange differences between my home and this place.”

“What strange differences?” Kratos asked.

She suddenly looked less confident. “It’s hard to explain,” she said, absently scratching the back of her neck. “I come from a time really far in the future. The only way I can tell is that most everything that exists here, including you two, could only have existed in what is my distant past.”

Kratos blinked. “What?” he said lamely.

“See, in the future--I don’t know how far in the future, but probably at least hundreds of years if not thousands--humans will destroy all life on Earth.” She spoke slowly, obviously quite aware of the enormity of what she was saying. “They’ll be able to restore some of it, but not most of it.”

There was a moment’s silence again, and then Atreus broke it. “How?” he sounded as incredulous as Kratos felt.

Aloy looked away. She seemed almost embarrassed. “Look, it’s really hard to explain, like I said. But humans eventually create these things, these...machines. The machines are very smart, but they can only really follow the instructions of humans. And humans don’t think about the consequences of their instructions, and they...basically...they basically tell the machines to destroy all life on the planet.”

The concept wasn’t outrageous to Kratos. “You are sure it will be humans who do this?” he asked.

She looked confused at this. “Yes. Who else could it be? Who else is there?”

Kratos felt Atreus looking at him, but did not meet his eyes. “Mmm,” he said. 

“Anyway, this place has to be from my history because I recognize the language they write in as one that existed before the Faro Plague.” She tilted her head and backtracked. “That’s what it was called when the machines leveled the Earth.” She continued. “It’s not a language humans use in my time. And neither is the one written on your arm.”

Kratos looked at Atreus and recalled helping him stay still while Faye had inked the marks into him. Atreus looked down at his arm, too, as if he had forgotten they were there. 

And I think I could figure out exactly when and where we are if I can get to a larger settlement, or maybe just a different one. I need more information. I need to see more of this place, but I think if I do that, I can start to put all these clues together.”

Atreus looked at her as if hacksilver had just poured out of her mouth. “Seriously?”

She looked back and forth from Atreus to Kratos. “Yeah. At least, I’m pretty sure. As sure as I am of anything at this point.” She glanced around her, considering the strangeness of the forest with malaise.

“If you could do all this yourself, why did you want to talk to us?” Atreus asked. “What could we give you that you don’t already have?”

She made eye contact with Kratos again. “Protection,” she said darkly. “In the future that I come from, there aren’t animals like the stag, or sheep, or anything like that. We have a few small creatures like rats and foxes and rabbits, but they’re all mostly harmless. And the plants here are unfamiliar to me. I need someone who can navigate nature in this time, if only just to keep me from killing myself.”

Kratos could feel Atreus’ face fall as he realized what she was asking of them. But before he could speak, Kratos said, “You can travel with us.” Atreus was looking at him, but Kratos did not reciprocate. “If you have traveled through time as you say, it is possible we have as well. If that is the case, I cannot promise that we will be any better off than you.”

“It’s still safer not to travel alone,” she said. She had visibly relaxed at his response.

“Can I speak to you a second,” Atreus said, forcing Kratos to meet his eye. 

They stepped a few yards away from the fire and Atreus dropped his voice to just louder than a whisper.  Kratos inclined his head to hear. “What happened to the plan?”

“She will obviously be of more use than I realized.”

“And you trust this crazy story?” Atreus looked and sounded incredulous. “This bit about time travel and there not being animals in the future? Are you serious?”

“If it is true, she is the only hope we have of finding a way home. If it is not true, she is no match for us and we needn’t worry.”

Atreus eyed him critically. “So you don’t trust her, then?”

“No. But we have few other options.” Atreus said nothing, but stood still, considering. “You previously agreed that protection was all we could offer her in exchange for information.”

“Yes, but I’m not used this,” Atreus hissed. “First the lie about the deer and now this sudden change of plan. What is going on?” The question came out as if he was begging.

Kratos hesitated, and then slowly shook his head. “We do not know where we are,” he said. “We have to be adaptable.”

Atreus scoffed. “Yes, of course. Because you’re always so good at that.”

“Mmm,” Kratos growled. Atreus led them back around the fire.

“I can take care of myself; I can shoot and fight and I travel hard. You would just be telling me what’s going to eat me and where to aim.”

“We will meet here tomorrow at dawn,” Kratos said with finality. “Do you know what direction to travel to the nearest town?”

Aloy looked concerned. “There’s a large river east of here that I was told I could follow south if I wanted to restock on the supplies I couldn’t get in town. But why dawn? Why not leave now?”

Kratos blinked dumbly. “It is night.”

She looked at him, seemingly expecting him to say more.

“It’s not safe to travel at night,” Atreus said. “We don’t know who else we might run into. And some predators hunt at night. We wouldn’t be able to see them.”

“Oh.” Her face fell. “But I’m ready to go now,” she said, almost to herself.

“You may stay with us at our camp tonight,” Kratos said, taking himself by surprise. He could feel Atreus’ eyes boring into the side of his head; he was clearly also surprised. “It is not far into the woods. You will be safe there.”

She gave a cautious smile. “Thank you,” she said hesitantly.

Kratos chanced a quick look at his son, just in time to see him roll his eyes before stalking off into the woods.

_ Adaptable _ , Kratos thought to himself as he kicked dirt over the fire to douse it.  _ I am being adaptable _ .

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This guy.


	6. Venison

They tramped through the underbrush without speaking. Atreus walked in front, followed by Aloy, who was followed by Kratos. Aloy thought she could feel him watching her, like his eyes created points of heat that warmed her back the longer he stared. She wanted to turn and look back at him, but she was already self-conscious about how often she’d done that around the fire. He was like a magnet; she felt like she had to look at him. His eyes most of all.

She had thought the adrenaline rush she’d gotten when she’d seen him the forest came from fear, so she’d assumed that it would calm down when it came time to speak to each other calmly, no weapons involved. It hadn’t. She’d spent the whole time with her heart thudding like a war drum in her chest, praying he and Atreus wouldn’t hear. It had dulled some over time, but she still felt heightened, and sharply aware of every movement he made behind her.

They hadn’t told her who they were. She had told them everything—well, almost everything—and they had told her nothing. She didn’t even know if they believed her story, thought they clearly weren’t discounting it completely. If she had met these men in the Sundom or the Sacred Lands, she would have given them wide berth and not let her curiosity take control, no matter how piercing or intense Kratos’ eyes were. But this wasn’t the Sundom or the Sacred Lands, and these men could be the difference between a sudden, gruesome death and living long enough to see the Sacred Lands again. And if she was going to travel with them tomorrow in the light, she should be able to trust them tonight in the dark. Aloy tried to ignore the suspicion she had that her decision to meet with them, and then her desire to stay with them at their camp, had less to do with self-protection and more to do with the anxious-squirrel feeling that had had her doing frantic push ups on the floor of the hut all day. 

After a few minutes, they came to a small clearing with the remains of a cook fire, surrounded by a couple large stones as well as some grass and brush that had been flattened where the men had slept. She saw a roughly knotted net stuffed with belongings hanging from a lower branch on a nearby tree.

Atreus dropped his bow and quiver down by the fire and went to sit on one of the stones. He picked a knife and whetstone up off the ground and began to busy himself with them. Aloy immediately realized the mistake she’d made in coming here; the time it took them all to fall asleep would likely need to be filled by something like conversation, and she couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do less than talk to these men. At least if she had waited until tomorrow, they could have talked about the road, their travel, and she could have asked them for information on all the unfamiliar flora and fauna. Tonight, she could imagine no conversation that would be comfortable or easy, and the stilted silence would likely drive her as mad as if she had stayed alone in the hut tonight. 

She heard Kratos walk around her from behind and come to the net hanging from the tree. “Are you hungry?” he asked, reaching up to untie it and bring it down.

Atreus looked up just long enough to roll his eyes. 

“Me?” Aloy said without thinking.

“Yes,” Kratos said. “I will cook some of the venison.”

Aloy was not hungry. But she did want to learn what venison was. “Yes,” she said more quietly than she had meant to.

Kratos took the net and laid it out on the other large stone. There was salted meat there, wrapped in papers she recognized as what the butcher had wrapped her deer in. He took a chunk out of the wrapping and began to cut it awkwardly with the large ax he unhooked from behind his back. So venison is meat, Aloy thought.

Because of the strange way he had to use the ax to cut the meat, something the ax was evidently not designed for, Aloy could tell it was going to take him longer than he’d like. Atreus was still sharpening his knife, though Aloy was sure the whetstone was past its usefulness at this point. So Aloy pulled two of her new arrows from her quiver and grabbed some of the brush from the ground to bring to the fire. Holding the arrows as close to the heads as she dared, she slid them together quickly, and though the stones were unfamiliar to her, they did make sparks that lit the brush, and soon the embers were again ablaze.

She leaned back on her heels and caught Kratos looking at her. They made eye contact, as they had around the other fire, and Aloy noticed again the knot in her stomach that hadn’t really gone away in the meantime. After a moment, Kratos peeled his eyes away and looked into the fire.

“Thank you,” he said simply. He had speared the three pieces of meat on a thin, sharp stick, and now laid them across the carefully balanced forked branches on either side of the fire, so low that the lengthening flames began to lick the edges. He gathered up the net and its items and went to hang it back in the tree. Aloy watched him out of the corner of her eye until she felt another gaze on her and turned to see Atreus looking at her. His eyes were a question he didn’t vocalize and she couldn’t guess.

“How long have you been traveling together?” she asked, pushing herself back to sit more comfortably a bit farther from the fire.

Atreus laughed. “As long as I’ve been alive,” he said. He gestured a thumb towards Kratos, “He’s my father.”

Aloy looked back and Kratos, who seemed to have frozen in place, his back to them.

“Oh,” Aloy said. “You don’t really look alike.” She didn’t know what else to say.

“Everyone says I look like my mom,” Atreus said with a shrug. “I say that’s a blessing.” Aloy smiled. Kratos came and sat on the remaining rock seat, looking deeply into the fire as if the conversation around him wasn’t happening. “Though his beard used to be more red, like my hair, so maybe I got that from him.”

“Where are you from?” Aloy asked.

Atreus faltered at that and looked at Kratos, who didn’t return his gaze. “A land called Midgard,” he said after a moment. “Do you know where that is?”

Aloy shook her head. “No, I don’t recognize the name,” she said. “That doesn’t mean anything, though. Just that it wasn’t in any of the information near my home. A lot of our information was lost during the Faro Plague.”

“So you know our language, but not our home?” Atreus said, with a tilt of his head.

Aloy hoped the warmth that spread across her face didn’t show in the low light of the fire. “Well, I don’t know anything about your language. I’ve just seen it before.” She pointed at his tattoos. “How did you get those?”

“My mother gave them to me,” he said, looking down at his arm and running his finger along the lines. “Father doesn’t read the language.”

“Atreus,” Kratos growled, and Atreus visibly flinched.

“Well, you don’t,” he mumbled.

“That is enough,” Kratos said.

“For what it’s worth, my people don’t read or write at all,” Aloy said in an attempt to conserve the conversation’s momentum. “Some of the other tribes do, like the Carja. But the Nora think that’s heresy.”

“The Nora are your people?” Atreus asked. “What are they like?”

“Well,” Aloy said, realizing too late the mistake she’d made, “they’re…they’re not really my people. I don’t have any people. But I was…born on their Sacred Lands and raised by a Nora brave. They are…” she searched for a softer word than she normally used about the Nora, “cold.”

“Is a Nora brave a hunter?” Atreus asked.

“A warrior, yes,” Aloy said. Suddenly the conversation was going an uncomfortable direction. “He served the tribe all his life, but when they asked for his help and he gave it, they cast him out to live alone in the wilderness.” She looked into the fire, which was growing and needed more logs. “When I was born, they gave me to him, and I was raised as an outcast.”

“Oh,” Atreus said. 

So much for momentum. They sat for several long minutes, all of them watching Kratos turn the spit as if it was a piece of art slowly hypnotizing them. The outside of the meat was brown and crisping over before Atreus spoke again.

“Who are the Carja?” he asked softly.

Aloy was surprised by the question. “They are a neighboring tribe. The Nora were at war with them for a long time—well, everyone was at war with them, really—but now they want peace. I’ve been living in Carja lands for a few years now, working with the king and his guards to…clean everything up, I guess.”

“You must be important in your time,” Kratos said, making Aloy’s stomach lurch, “to serve a king.”

“I don’t serve him,” she said sharply and without thinking. “I offer help where I can give it, but I don’t belong to anyone.”

Kratos paused, and then grunted. Maybe she was hearing things, but it sounded to her like agreement, or perhaps approval.

“The Carja read and write?” Atreus asked.

“Yes,” Aloy said. “Almost too much,” she added with a sigh. “I’ve been reading through their histories a lot lately, and I don’t think I’ll ever get through them all or find what I’m looking for.”

“Can you teach me?” Atreus asked.

Aloy was again surprised by the question. “You want me…to teach you how to read and write in a language that won’t exist in your lifetime?”

Atreus shrugged. “I like learning languages. My mother taught me all the ones she knew, and I taught myself some when we found them on our travels. It’s just…it’s almost like a game,” he said.

Aloy shook her head in mild disbelief. “I…I guess I can try. I’ve never taught anyone something like that.”

Atreus smiled broadly. “I’m a quick learner. Don’t worry.”

Kratos pulled the meat off the flame and held it out for Atreus to inspect. Atreus stabbed it with his over-sharpened knife and pulled it back to see the inside. It was still a bit red. “Good,” Atreus said.

“Take it then,” Kratos said. Atreus unspooled a strand of fabric from his arm and wrapped it loosely around his hand before grabbing the meat on the end of the stick and sliding it off, quickly tossing the meat back and forth between his hands to keep from burning himself. Kratos then easily slid the opposite cut of meat off the other end of the stick with his bare hands. He handed the stick and the remaining piece of meat out for Aloy. She took the stick gingerly, and nodded in thanks.

They were quiet again, the sounds of their chewing mingling with the crackling of the fire and the symphony of the woods around them.

_ So, venison is meat _ , Aloy thought to herself, using the opportunity to catalog the few things she’d learned.  _ And they are father and son, from Midgard _ . She wondered idly where Atreus’ mother was, who she was, but she recognized the way he talked about her. It was how Rost used to talk about his daughter. Whoever she was, she was gone now, so asking questions might make things more awkward.  _ Atreus likes to learn languages _ ,  _ but Kratos can’t read _ . Aloy wondered at that, too. The boy and his father were strangely different, and Aloy thought maybe Atreus’ mother was the key to how and why.

They all continued to stare into the fire as it slowly died down. The meat sat heavily in Aloy’s stomach, but it was the best she’d eaten in days. Atreus picked up his short knife again and began to carve away at a stick he found on the ground next to him. Kratos poked at the darkening embers of the fire, stirring them apart and coaxing them to cool. Aloy could sense they both wanted to sleep, but neither was going to say anything.

She dropped the stick into the fire, letting the dying heat burn off the grease and oil left on it. “I’ll sleep over here,” she said quietly to no one in particular as she moved farther away from the fire into a spot of brush and leaves that looked relatively untouched.

“Do you…” Kratos began, but then stopped.

“What’s that?” Aloy asked, looking up at him as she half sat, half reclined into the grass.

Kratos tilted his head from side to side, cracking his neck. “Do you need a blanket?” he asked.

Aloy felt that now all-too-familiar jolt of adrenaline. “No,” she said. “But…thank you.” Their eyes met again and lingered together for a long moment, perhaps the longest since their meeting in the forest. Then Kratos nodded and turned away, standing and sliding his ax into the clip on his back.

“Good night,” Atreus said as he began to kick dirt over the embers.

“Good night,” Aloy said, turning over to lie on her side, her back to the camp. When she closed her eyes, two bright, amber points of light peered at her from within her eyelids. It felt like hours passed before she fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe it was something she ate.


	7. Upriver

They broke camp, such as it was, close to sunup the next day. Atreus trotted ahead of them as they stepped out of the forest and into the open plain. “I’ll meet you at the river. I need to go back to the tanner and get something for that silver I gave her that I’m definitely not going to get back.” He turned and ran off towards town.

“Boy,” Kratos called after him. Atreus merely waved without looking back and continued running. Aloy heard Kratos sigh and stifled a laugh.

They continued on in stilted silence, circumventing the most populated areas. Aloy caught herself glancing over at him every few moments and forced herself to walk ahead a few paces so he was out of her sight. All around them, the grasses grew tall, some up to Aloy’s waist. With every step, she felt the crunch of plant stalks snapping under her foot and smelled the sweet earthy tang that followed. She could almost imagine she was back in the Sacred Lands, if the plains around them weren’t covered in less familiar trees and animals.

They passed an enormous bush with small, purple-blue berries on it, and Aloy broke the silence to ask Kratos what they were. She looked back at him for the first time in a half hour, and saw his eyes dart straight ahead, not meeting her eye. His expression was like a child caught somewhere he shouldn’t be. “I have heard it called blackthorn,” he said.

She looked back at the bushes. “Is the fruit edible?”

“I believe it is,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “You don’t sound sure.”

“They look like blackthorn,” he said impatiently, “but I cannot be certain they are blackthorn, given our...situation. It would be better if you asked someone who lives here.”

Aloy examined the fruit more carefully; most of the berries were smaller and tougher than what she was used to. She suspected that, edible or not, they weren’t fully ripe. The image of Kratos seeing her sputter and spit after putting a foreign plant in her mouth did not sit well with her. He might have been watching her every move, and she, perhaps childishly, wanted him to like what he saw.

At least an hour passed between when they left the forest and when they came to the river she’d been told about. It had to be more than 500 feet wide and it ran fast, even close to the shore. Huge trees stuck out thirsty roots from their embankments and piles of rocks and stones showed where the water had cut into the land and caused a slide. Aloy got as close as she dared to the edge and looked down into the muddy eroded area beneath her, teeming with bugs and small creatures she’d never seen before.

“What’s that?” she got down on her knees and pointed at a slimy, wet looking little animal perched perilously close to the rushing water.

Kratos walked over and, towering over her, peered around the ledge to look at the creature.

“A frog,” he said, leaning back and stepping away. “Or a toad.” She looked up at him as he turned his head and cracked his neck. “Atreus will know.”

Aloy saw Atreus jogging up behind his father. “What will I know?” he asked as he got close. Kratos spun around, again acting like a child caught in a lie. She found his obvious discomfort with being looked at when he wasn’t aware ironic, almost comical.

“Is this a frog or a toad?” Aloy asked, pointing again at the creature. It hadn’t moved, but she could see a bulbous area under its head that expanded and contracted, like breath.

Atreus was breathing heavily as he came over and looked. “I don’t really know the difference,” he said. “I don’t think it matters.”

“Can you eat it?” Aloy asked.

Atreus made a face. “More work than it’s worth,” he said. “They’re hard to catch and there’s not much meat.” He was holding a drawstring bag made of hide. “We can put our supplies and things in here.” He held it open for Kratos, who untied the netted, makeshift bag from his belt and pulled from it the remaining wrapped chunks of venison. Then he and Atreus traded, Kratos fixing the hide bag to his belt and Atreus beginning to pick at the knots that held the rope in its shape.

“We need to follow this south,” Aloy said, squinting upriver as if she would be able to spot their destination from here. Between the rolling of the valley and the presence of trees and hills that stretched out in front of her, most of their path was not visible. “They said it would be a day or so of walking, but the next town should be easy to see from the river bank.”

With Atreus back with them, Aloy felt herself relax. She hadn’t realized how walking alone next to Kratos had involuntarily clenched her muscles, in part at least because his presence basically enforced a blanket of silence over them. Conversely, Atreus chatted easily, clearly enjoying her as a new audience for what must have been his favorite stories. They reminded Aloy of the stories she’d heard the matriarchs tell during her one night in Mother’s Heart; they were woven through with a strange kind of certainty about wild and fantastical things, and the big picture was a world Aloy couldn’t recognize as real. Atreus talked about giants and realm travel and strange talking snakes with long, impossible names. Aloy didn’t hold much for their content, but she couldn’t help feeling swept up in Atreus’ excitement and the energy he effused as he recounted them.

“You’re very good at telling stories,” she said after he finished one about a dwarven alchemist who stored his soul in a gold ring for safe keeping.

“Thank you,” Atreus said, and she saw the barest of self-satisfied smirks on his face. “Mother always told me stories.” He turned to look back at Kratos who was stoically walking several paces behind them. “Father is really awful at it.” He didn’t bother to keep his voice low. Aloy looked back; Kratos had clearly heard the change in topic, and his scowl had deepend as a result, but he did not respond.

They went on, staying as close to the river as they could, though they had to cut in periodically to avoid impassible rocky terrain or a path narrowed by trees and brush growing along the shoreline. When they came across a colorful plant or crossed paths with an animal Aloy didn’t recognize, she would point them out to Atreus and ask him “What is that?” and “Can I eat it?” Atreus would always hedge his answers like his father had, saying something like, “Where we’re from, it’s called ‘penny bun,’ and it makes for a hearty stew. But I don’t know if I’d trust any mushroom I saw at this point.” Aloy made mental notes of all the strange names and little equivocations and made plans to test them with the locals in the next town. She had a feeling Atreus and Kratos were not as far from home as she was, but she needed to know more.

As the sun passed behind the trees on the horizon, they gradually slowed their pace and began to look for a suitable place to spend the night. Throughout the day, Aloy had eaten several handfuls of nuts and dried fruit that she’d bought in town and rationed ever since. When they set up camp and decided not to bother with a fire, Aloy’s stomach growled, but she knew she wanted sleep more than she wanted to wait up for another chunk of meat.

“What sort of name is ‘Atreus,’” she asked after a few moments where they all three lay looking up at the canopy of stars mixed into the trees’ branches.

“The one good story Father told me was that he named me after a soldier he knew in Sparta,” Atreus said. They were laid out in an irregular triangle, so that Aloy’s head was near Atreus’ feet.

“Atreus,” Kratos said, more loudly and sternly than was maybe necessary in the quiet darkness. Aloy could have sworn his voice shook the ground around them, its depth humming in her chest.

“Oh, sorry. Was that a secret?”

Kratos growled wordlessly.

“What is Sparta?” Aloy asked.

No one spoke for more than a minute. Aloy was about to assume her question was somehow too invasive, when Kratos said “The land where I was born.”. Then, as if to counteract the dampening effect his previous outburst had had on the conversation, he added, “No, you cannot eat it.”

Aloy heard Atreus “snrrk” into his hand before she realized that it had been a joke. Then she laughed aloud before she could stop herself.

“Noted,” she said. She could hear the smile in her own voice. She hoped Kratos heard it too.


	8. The Hillfort

Kratos rose before the sun and, seeing he was the only one awake, went on ahead to scout the route for the day. He didn’t get far before he recognized the sounds and smells of humanity massed in one place. While he was still under the cover of trees, he peered out and towards the horizon. Only hundreds of yards away, along down into the river, a tall, flat hill rose out of the ground. Kratos could see figures of what could only be soldiers silhouetted at the top of the hill in the brightening dawn. 

He jogged back to where Atreus and Aloy lay, still asleep. He reached out an arm, ready to shake his son gently to wakefulness, but something stopped him. Aloy lay on her side, her hair fanning out behind her head, facing Kratos as he hovered over Atreus. Her lips were parted by a sliver, and he could see light reflecting off a small pool of moisture at the corner of her mouth. But what drew his attention most was the small pinch at the bridge of her nose, a slight but persistent frown knit into her otherwise peaceful face. 

_ I don’t have any people _ , she had said.  _ I offer help where I can give it, but I belong to no one. _ The memory of her words that night by the fire came unbidden to his mind, silt rising in a pool. He was suddenly aware just how much time he had spent in the past day watching her when she didn’t realize it.  _ I belong to no one _ , she had said. Kratos’ face burned and he forced himself to look away. 

Atreus awoke with barely and coaxing from Kratos, and then, after a time, Kratos' describing the hill he’d seen with the soldiers atop it woke Aloy. She asked him to describe it again, and she asked him for more details, and he had to put more effort than he liked into focusing on what he was saying. After just a minute or so to clear the sleep from their heads and to pick up the few belongings they had set down, all three were up and walking quickly, following Kratos’ memory.

When they got to the edge of the wood, Kratos stopped and turned towards them.

“I will approach alone and determine how dangerou they are to us.”

Atreus scoffed. “If you go, they’ll make themselves more of a threat.” He shook his head. “No, I’ll go in, just like before, and when I know it’s safe, I’ll come back and tell you.”

“I’m going with you,” Aloy said, her eyes flashing. “You shouldn’t walk in there blind and alone.”

“I’ll be fine,” Atreus said exasperatedly. “You two look way out of place and will draw too much attention.”

“She is right, boy,” Kratos growled. “It is reckless to enter by yourself.”

Aloy nodded, and Kratos caught a tiny moment of thanks in her eyes before she went on. “I was accepted enough by the people in the last town. I’ll just keep my weapons out of sight as best as possible.”

“But we can’t just leave father out here,” Atreus said. Kratos could hear how his voice was on the verge of a child’s whining complaint. “If something happens, he’ll have no way to contact us and we won’t know how to find him.”

“That wasn’t a problem for you two before,” Aloy said.

“It was,” Atreus said sharply, “there was just nothing we could do about it at the time. Now there is.”

“Enough.” Kratos barked, feeling phantom flames lick his clenched fists. “It is better if we do not split our party. We will all three go together.”

“But--” Atreus began.

“Atreus,” Kratos said. It was a command, and for once, Atreus obeyed.

They left the forest with no attempt at stealth. If they had had a flag of surrender to fly, Kratos would have used it. As it was, they could only look so nonthreatening. As they marched forward, they heard shouts and calls from within the hill: men and women called to each other to warn the group of approaching strangers. When they got within fifty feet or so, Kratos realized that they were not really looking at a hill, but a great earthen wall.

It was unlike anything Kratos had seen. It rose steeply out of the ground, like cliffs that sprung up from nothing, but was covered in thick grasses and moss. A road had been trampled into one side, like a notch carved into a tree trunk. Standing sentinel in the middle of the road at the top of the wall were three men, each with a rounded tower shield strapped to one arm and a double-edged sword held by the other. The men looked half mad: their faces and chests were painted with a strange blue-gray mud that had caked, cracked, and dripped in places, and their short-cropped hair stood on end, stiffened by sweat and dirt. They looked down on their visitors with clear distrust.

“And who are you, then?” one of them called. Kratos couldn’t see from this distance which one, as they were all half hidden behind their shields.

“We’re travellers from the settlement to the north,” Aloy called back. The force of pushing her voice up the hill brought it into a higher register, but Kratos thought there also may have been fear there, as well. "The villagers told us we could come here to refresh our supplies." 

One of the men scoffed and spit on the ground. "Well you can just walk on back and tell those worthless shits that if they want to send people down to our gates, they can send warriors, and they can do it five days ago when we needed them." 

Aloy gave Kratos a significant sidelong look.

_ Five days _ . 

"There's no one's allowed in or out," another one of them shouted. "Queen's orders." 

"Please," Atreus called. His voice cracked, which reddened his face. "Let us spend our silver with your merchants and we'll be on our way." 

"We need all the goods we've got, boy-o," a man called. "We have nothing to give you, and no use for silver." 

Aloy turned to face Kratos. "What do we do?" she said, keeping her voice low. "Just go around, keep following the river?"

"What threats on the road should we be aware of?" Kratos' low voice seemed to bounce off the earthen walls. 

"Roman legion stationed south, down in Camulodunum." The one man spat again. "wouldn't go that way if you want to keep your head." He nodded at Aloy. "And your woman."

There was a disturbance behind the men, from somewhere Kratos couldn't see. Voices were calling to each other, but Kratos couldn't make out the words. One of the three guardsmen turned, as if to look at something coming from within the walls. 

"Let me see. I must see her." The voice was loud, harshly cutting, and a strong baritone. As the woman belonging to it crested the hill, Kratos was not surprised to see that her face, too, was encrusted with blue markings. But the sword in her hand was paired with its twin instead of a tower shield. 

Beside him he heard Aloy breathe in sharply, and he understood why. The woman standing there, of a height with the guards but somehow also towering over them, had long, tangled red hair, braided and knotted to keep it out of her face. Her arms were lean and tensed, her stance was fierce, but even at a distance Kratos could see the weariness in her. 

"That is her," her loud, low voice came again. "They are the ones. Bring them in." she looked round at the guards who now stood behind her.

"But,  _ mo bhanrigh _ , we don't--" one of the men began. 

"At once." She did not even look at him as she passed back behind the wall, dismissing him with a short gesture. "Bring them to my hut immediately."

Kratos was not sure what was happening, but when he looked at Aloy, he saw his own confusion amplified there. 

"Was I imagining things," Atreus said from behind them, "or was that woman just an older version of you?" 

Aloy shook her head, mouth slightly open. "It doesn't make sense to me either." 

"You're sure this isn't your time?" Atreus asked. The guards were half-heartedly descending the hill, and Atreus, Kratos, and Aloy were walking to meet them. 

"Reasonably sure, yeah," she said. Her brow was furrowed in thought, the shadow of the frown Kratos had seen on her sleeping face that morning. "I mean, it's not exactly unheard of, running into people who look like me from hundreds of years in my past. I just…I mean, I thought it was just a once-in-a-lifetime thing."

"This has happened before?" Kratos asked. 

She looked at him as if she were waking suddenly from a dream. "Sort of, yes." She shook her head. "It's hard to explain," she scowled at the men as they approached, "but not likely to happen again, I'd think."

"Mmm," he grunted absently. 

They had reached the guardsmen, who did not seem pleased to be escorting them inside the walls. They eyed his ax, the two bows, and Aloy's spear with distaste, but said nothing. 

“Follow,” the man in the middle said, stomping off down the path that led into the heart of the village. Of the three men, his hair stood the tallest and straightest from his head.  _ Perhaps that is a mark of leadership, _ Kratos thought sardonically.

The earthwork had created a series of gradually smaller plateaus, like a layered cake. It had appeared as only one steep hill from where they had stood below because each layer had a lip of earth around the edge, like a low fence, and the successive layers were set farther back into the flat area left by the base. Huts very similar to those in the northern settlement clumped together towards the center of their respective layers, and the town spanned what Kratos estimated had to be at least a mile across. 

_ This is not a village,  _ he thought.  _ This is a fortress. _ It was a fortress where common people lived alongside soldiers, women and children as prepared for battle as the grown men. Kratos felt himself slide into place like a knife into a sheath as his mind superimposed memories of Sparta onto the scene around him. The people wore thicker clothes, they looked less regimented, but they were as accustomed to fighting as he had been raised to be. 

And there had been fighting. All around him, Kratos saw the signs. The people were weary, many were visibly injured, and there was a mixture of people who were not usually drawn together, as if two or more towns had converged on this hill in favor of its defenses.

The man led them through the maze of huts--they were smaller and more tightly spaced than the last town--until they reached what may have been the most central building on the hill. Nothing about its outside showed any significance, but more guards stood on either side of the doorway, holding spears that were taller than they were. When their strange group approached, the sentries gave the escort questioning looks, but when he gestured for Kratos, Aloy, and Atreus to enter the hut, no one stopped them.

Inside was dimly lit by a fire in what looked like a low, earthen oven in the center of the room. There was a large padded area that resembled a bed big enough for two people. There were stumps of wood, large stones, and roughly made pillows set in a circle around the fire. On one of these sat the woman who had seen them at the gate. Her expression was sharp but inscrutable. Standing this close to her, Kratos thought he could see differences between her and Aloy--her face was more angular, her arms not nearly as muscular, and her eyes were an eerily bright blue--but in the near-darkness the resemblance was still unsettling.

She did not react much as they entered. "Sit," she said, her voice low. She gestured to the various seats around the glowing hearth. "I have been wondering when you would come." She looked specifically at Aloy when she spoke. 

Aloy looked back at her, her face hard. "So you can explain how we got here, then?" Her tone was expectant, almost goading the woman to say no. 

"The goddess sent you to me." 

Kratos involuntarily closed his eyes tightly, as though he could block out the words he'd just heard. 

"Which goddess?" Atreus asked. 

"On the night of my daughter's capture, I prayed to Andraste to send me aid, to sharpen my swords against my enemy." She spoke with an air of mystery, as if she were telling a bedtime story to children. "That night, she came to me in a dream to tell me to wait for you here," she nodded at Aloy, "that she would find Earth's greatest warriors and bring them to me, and I would know them in the way I know my own reflection in a lake." She leveled her gaze on Aloy, staring intensely into her eyes. "The moment I saw you, I knew."

"You're saying," Aloy began, and Kratos could hear nearly as much ire in her voice as he felt in the pit of his stomach, "that you prayed us here." 

The woman merely blinked, slowly. 

Aloy's face was a deadpan. "That's ridiculous." 

"I'm sorry," Atreus said, holding up a hand to no one in particular, "we still don't know where we are, exactly." 

The woman held her arms out. "This is the heart of the Iceni," she said, "the greatest clan of the Britons. And I," she said with a small bow of her head, "am their queen, Boudica."

Kratos looked at Aloy, but saw no sign of recognition in her face. 

"Do you know how to send us back?" Aloy asked, her voice flat with suppressed frustration. 

Boudica gave her a look of slight confusion, as if the change in topic had caught her off guard. "Back?" 

Kratos saw Aloy's temple flex as she ground her teeth together. "Yes. How will you get us back to our homes?" 

She looked around at them. "I do not understand."

"We are not from here," Aloy said, closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. "We come from…far, far away. We don't know how to get home. Do you?" she looked up at Boudica, but Kratos did not see much hope in her expression. 

Boudica's brow furrowed. "If you cannot find your way on your own, Andraste will guide you." 

Aloy rolled her eyes and turned bodily away from her, crossing her arms over her chest. 

Silence hung in the hut around them, broken only by the crackling of the fire in the oven. Kratos could feel a flame building in his abdomen; he did not know how long he could suppress it. He did not know how long he wished to. 

"You said you prayed for help against your enemy," Atreus said softly, as if he were talking to a frightened child. "Who is your enemy?" 

Boudica narrowed her eyes, and Kratos saw a familiar pain there. "Gaius Suetonius Paulinus," she spat. "A plague upon this land. He and his men must be destroyed and driven out, like the rats of winter."

“What did he do?” Atreus asked.

“Even as we speak, he seeks to dethrone me and bring all of the Iceni, and indeed, all of the Britons under his rule and the rule of his god-king, Nero.” She spat to the side; Kratos recognized the action as ritual disrespect. “He calls himself Lord Governor over the Britons. My husband served him faithfully until he was killed in a skirmish against Catuvellauni warriors at the end of the last harvest. Word must have reached the Governor of my husband’s death, because he sent soldiers and slaves to my home not five days ago.” Her face darkened and her eyes glazed over as she recalled and relived the events. “They did not hesitate to raze our town to the ground, defile our people, salt our fields, and in every other way make clear to us that our beloved Lord Governor did not recognize my husband’s bequest of his throne to my daughters.” 

She blinked rapidly, coming back to the present. “Only a handful of us were left, and the soldiers instructed us to warn our kin that Lord Governor Paulinus would put down any dissent or rebellion. We regrouped here just two days ago.”

Kratos recognized this story, in the same way he recognized this woman’s tone and expression. This was a story of invaders, conquerors, the kinds of soldiers he used to lead into battle against the Athenians. And Kratos recognized the fatal mistake this governor and his men had made: leaving survivors.

“What do you think your goddess sent us to you to accomplish?” Atreus asked.

Boudica looked at him as though he was being intentionally absurd. “What else but to march with me on the Romans at Camulodunum and show them that the warriors of Andraste will not submit to barbarism of foreign usurpers.”

“Well, I suppose, yes,” Atreus sputtered. “But why us? What makes us better than your own warriors?”

Boudica scoffed. “It is not that you are better than the Iceni,” she said sharply. “It is that you are better than the Romans, and you bring some knowledge or skill that we will need to defeat them.”

Atreus looked at Kratos, who in turn glanced at Aloy. She was still stubbornly not looking at Boudica. Instead, she rested her head on her fists and stared daggers into the ground at her feet.

“And if we refuse?” Kratos said, speaking for the first time in what felt like hours. At the sound of his voice, Aloy was apparently ripped from her reverie and came to look at him.

Boudica’s eyes flashed, and again Kratos saw the eerie resemblance between her and Aloy. “You would stand against the Iceni? Against the will of Andraste? Rather than join us in destroying invaders who would rape and kill us?”

Kratos said nothing, but maintained his cold eye contact with Boudica.

“Then you, too, are an enemy,” she said, her voice low and gravelly. “And you, too, will be destroyed.”

“Can we discuss this amongst ourselves?” Atreus said quickly, trying frantically to intercept the conversation.

Boudica turned to him, surveying him slowly like a cattle at auction. “What is there to discuss?”

Atreus paused, visibly dumbfounded. “It’s just that we’ve travelled a long way, and we still have so many questions that haven’t been answered,” he said. “Please try to understand, your goddess has transported us over great distance, over land and…” he hesitated, then continued “through time. We are completely unfamiliar with your world and your wars, and we need a few moments to process everything you’ve told us.”

Boudica did not look sympathetic, nor did she respond much at all to the revelation that they were from different time periods. She stood, her hand resting on the hilt of a knife at her waist. Kratos’ muscles tensed and he felt the fire roar inside him.  “You will discuss,” she said, her eyes landing on Kratos’ in direct threat. “And then you will answer to me.” With a flourish of her robes, she crossed the hut in a few steps and exited through the way they had come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ruh roh.


	9. The Compromise

Atreus caught himself staring at Kratos; a fire had blazed to life just a moment ago in his father’s eyes, but now they seemed to have dimmed and Kratos’ fists came slowly unclenched. 

“Well, that could have gone much worse,” Atreus half said, half sighed, letting out the breath he hadn’t noticed he had been holding throughout the entire conversation with Boudica.

“Are you kidding?” Aloy said. Atreus looked over at her; her eyes were wide and her mouth hung open slightly. “She told us nothing. We have nothing.” She threw her hands up and stood up to pace around the hut. “We have worse than nothing, really, because now we’ve also been conscripted into her ridiculous army against an enemy who is probably pretty powerful, if he’s already defeated her once.”

These days, nothing forced Atreus to be calm so much as seeing someone else upset. “Right, I know, but let’s focus on what she did tell us.”

Aloy rounded on him so suddenly he felt instinctually threatened. “Oh, don’t tell me you believe that boarshit about her goddess bringing us here to save her people.”

Atreus’ brow furrowed. “I mean, stranger things have happened.”

“Name one.” Aloy barked, throwing her hands up. “Name one stranger thing than an actual god actually existing. And not only existing, but somehow transporting people through time and space.”

Atreus quickly glanced at Kratos, whose expression changed only slightly, but said very clearly  _ Tell her nothing. _ There was no need to worry about that; Atreus didn’t know how to answer her anyway. “I don’t understand,” he shook his head and shut his eyes. “Are there not gods in the future?”

Aloy rolled her eyes and resumed pacing. “Oh sure, there’s the Sun, and there’s the Blue Light, and there’s the useless goddamn All-Mother. We’ve got gods coming out our asses.” She turned to Atreus again. “But I’ve met them all, and they’re never what anyone thinks they are. They’re machines, they’re computer code, they’re a natural phenomenon that can be explained with just the barest understanding of how the world actually works. They’re not some other-worldly being with superpowers and some kind of divine plan.” She shook her head quickly. “They’re definitely not anything that can fix the situation we’re in.”

“Okay,” Atreus said magnanimously, in as even a tone as he could manage. “We don’t have many options here.  I think the best we can do is just help Boudica with what she asks for. Since that’s what she thinks got us here, maybe there’s some way that can get us back.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

It was Atreus’ turn to throw his hands up in futility. “Do you have any better ideas?” He glanced over at Kratos who looked exactly like the world’s most innocent criminal.  Not for the first time in these past few days, Atreus felt like he was the parent and his father the child.

Aloy huffed through her nose and briefly reminded Atreus of an angered bull moose. “There has to be something else we can do.”

“They outnumber us twenty to one, so it wouldn’t be smart to fight our way out,” Atreus said, ticking off the options on his fingers. “If we sneak out, leave in the middle of the night, we’ll be in the same place we were yesterday, and we’ll have made an enemy out of what appears to be a sort of important group of people in the area.” Atreus shrugged. “As far as I can see, that leaves us with our only option of just continuing on as Boudica wants us to and seeing what happens.”

“And when that doesn’t work?” Aloy asked rhetorically. 

Atreus closed his eyes against her insistence. “Hopefully we’ll have more information by then and we’ll have different options.”

Aloy growled, a mannerism similar to what Kratos sometimes did when he didn’t have any words to say but wanted to make his annoyance known. Atreus didn’t know what would be worse: if she had picked it up from Kratos or if she had always done it herself, too. 

“We don’t know anything about this Gaius Paulinus or his Romans,” Aloy said. Though her words still had the passionate frustration she’d had since Boudica left the hut, she had stopped pacing and now simply stood with one hand on her hip, the other gesticulating half-heartedly as she spoke. Atreus could tell she was winding down. “What if he’s not the enemy Boudica says he is?”

“You think there’s a way someone could do what she described him doing and still not be an ‘enemy’?” Atreus asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“I think one person’s memory of an event can be different than the event itself,” she said. “I’d like to have a better idea why these Iceni and the Romans have the conflict that they do before we rush in to try to kill anyone.”

“We’d have to figure that sort of thing out anyway, if we’re going up against them in battle.” Atreus plowed on, hoping he could replace her frantic energy with his own. “So our plan will have three parts to it: one, we’ll try to learn everything we can about Paulinus and the Romans; two, we’ll try to find our own way home, or at least try to better understand this ‘praying to Andraste’ thing--” Aloy made a noise as if to cut him off, but he talked over her. “And three, we’ll go along with whatever Boudica asks, as long as it doesn’t conflict with our other two goals. How does that sound?” He looked at his father, hoping for approval, acknowledgement that he’d said the right thing.

Following Atreus’ gaze, Aloy rounded on Kratos herself. “What do you think of all this?”

Kratos’ eyebrows were buried so deeply in the folds of his forehead that Atreus wasn’t sure they’d ever be fully visible again. He glanced back and forth between his son and Aloy, sitting up straighter under their combined gaze.

“Atreus is right,” he said after long last, his voice extra gravelly from lack of use.

Aloy narrowed her eyes and scrutinized his face, but said nothing.

Atreus nodded and tried to hide his smile.


	10. New Plan

Kratos and Aloy had somewhere come to the unspoken agreement that Atreus would do the talking with the Iceni. He made known their decision to follow Boudica’s direction, while Aloy brooded darkly, her arms crossed over her chest, her fingers tapping out an impatient rhythm on her bicep. Now they were outside the tent, Boudica in front of all of them, now standing outside in the gray, misty midday.

“In two days’ time,” Boudica was saying loudly, as if giving a speech to some unseen crowd, “our warparty will descend on my home, now teeming with Roman vermin, where my eldest daughter, Betrys, is being held captive. Together, with you as our champions, we will free her and the other prisoners, and drown our enemy in their own blood.”

The few guards who stood nearby gave low grunting cheers, hitting the hilts of their swords against their shields. Aloy could see how they might appear threatening to an oncoming enemy: their blue faces, impossible hair, and animalistic taunts would certainly catch anyone off guard. But Aloy didn’t appraise their strategy very highly.

“Once Betrys is again with Alis and I, the Iceni queens in full force, we will unite the tribes under our banner and march together on Camulodunum, the beating heart of the Roman scourge, and the home of Gaius Paulinus himself.” She shouted this last bit, pumping her fist in the air and looking up into the sky like she was calling down lightning. “I will personally liberate Iceni and all the Britons, by liberating Gaius’ head from his neck.” Again, the guards chanted and cheered, and Aloy closed her eyes to block them out.

“This is a bad plan,” she whispered for Kratos’ benefit. He gave her a sidelong look and raised an eyebrow. “It’s a waste to send in a whole warparty without scouting the place out first.”

“What alternative would you suggest?” Kratos asked. His version of a whisper was like a low, rumbling purr that Aloy could feel reverberating in her bones. 

“We need to find out what we’re walking into,” she said, remembering warchief Sona and their first attack on the Eclipse camp. “Stealth might be more effective than brute force.”

“Mmm,” Kratos mumbled, generating a roll of thunder that passed over and through Aloy like a warm breeze. “You are not wrong.”

_ I know that _ , she thought to herself. Nevertheless, her stomach leapt a little at his acknowledgement.

“Atreus,” Kratos’ called out, making Aloy jump. “To me.”

Atreus turned to look at them, a worried look on his face, but he trotted over dutifully. “Yes father?”

“Tell Boudica she should send a scout ahead of the warparty,” Kratos said. “It may save time,” he added. “And lives.”

“Do the champions have a plan for our attack?” Boudica called to them when she noticed their hushed conversation.

“I will go ahead of the group,” Aloy called back. “I can scout out the enemy camp and find the best approach, maybe disable some of their warriors.”

Boudica seemed to consider this. 

“You should not go in alone,” Kratos said, not bothering to whisper anymore. “Atreus and I will go.”

Aloy almost laughed as she looked him up and down. “You? You’re going to sneak past their guards? Are they blind?” She gestured at Atreus. “He and I could probably do it well enough, if you think one person isn’t enough.”

“He has never fought with a warparty,” Kratos said dismissively. “He has no practice assessing the strategy required.”

Aloy looked at Atreus in time to see his attempt to hide his disappointment. “Well, I’m not  _ not _ going,” Aloy said, crossing her arms. “I  _ have _ infiltrated a camp with a warparty before, so I  _ do  _ know the strategy.

Boudica stepped towards them. “This plan is a good one,” she said, but her dark tone did not match her words. “You two will go,” she pointed first at Kratos and then at Aloy. “You will leave him here.” She looked at Atreus.

Before Aloy could speak up to protest, she felt as much as she saw Kratos square off to Boudica. He was easily the tallest person in the crowd: he stood head and shoulders above the war queen, and she was taller than her soldiers. Standing next to him, Aloy felt impossible heat radiating off his body in waves, as though he had somehow become fire itself.

“You will not threaten my son.”

Aloy frowned. Then it clicked. “You don’t trust us to come back?” Aloy said, raising her eyebrows at Boudica. 

“You give me no reason to,” Boudica said, straightening to her fullest height, which brought her an inch or two above Aloy. Aloy did not take the bait.

“That you are still alive is reason enough,” Kratos growled. Aloy saw that his fists were at his sides and his knees were bent in such a way that he looked like he could, at any moment, leap at her, fists first. As the image came to her mind, she couldn’t decide whether she wanted him to follow through or not.

“Father, I will stay,” Atreus said, turning to Kratos and looking to Aloy with a pleading look. “Like you said, I won’t be much use if I go. And they wouldn’t hurt me, even if they could.” He shot a dark look at Boudica. “Because you can’t.”

Boudica said nothing, but continued to literally look down her nose at them. This seemed like an odd choice, given that she was shorter than both of them, and had to tilt her head back a comical amount in order to pull it off. 

Kratos was staring Boudica down, the flames that Aloy could feel but not see still coming off his body like steam. Aloy’s heart was racing, her breath coming haltingly, but she couldn’t say it was because of fear. 

“How far is it to the settlement with the captives?” Atreus asked, calling out to anyone who would answer.

“A half day south, along the river,” one of the guards called back. Though the men standing closest to Boudica were stone-faced and braced against the tension building all around them, most of the other warriors looked less certain about whose side they were on, exactly.

“You can leave today, now even, and be back in the morning,” Atreus said to Aloy. Kratos and Boudica were still locked in a contest of threatening glares.

“Are you sure you want to stay here?” Aloy asked him, lowering her voice. “With them?”

Atreus made a face and shook his head. “I’m not worried about them.”

“It’s only going to be worse now,” Aloy said, giving him a serious look, “after all this.”

“I can handle myself,” he said. Then, as if the thought occurred to him as he said it, he added, “I am my father’s son.” His expression became distant, as if he was remembering something, or perhaps imagining some potential future. The hard edge to his words took Aloy by surprise.

“Father,” Atreus rested his fist against Kratos’ upper arm. Kratos seemed to soften at the touch, but only slightly. “Go.”

Kratos hesitated, then huffed once out his nose, and Aloy could have sworn there was dark smoke there. “I will be back by sunrise.” His voice was so low and burning that his words almost blended together, and Aloy had to strain to make them out. “You will know my anger, if I have reason to show you.” He backed off a few steps, seeming to push himself off some invisible wall. Aloy noticed for the first time that his axe had never left his back. She wondered idly if he even needed it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I pushed this one out a little faster than I usually do, so I will probably have to come back and make some edits at some point. That's not my usual MO, but I know y'all wanted to get to some kind of resolution with Boudica's brazenness and Kratos' rage.
> 
> It's only a temporary resolution...he R3+L3'd but he's still got a full bar...


	11. The Princess

 

The initial descent from the fort was silent and tense, not that Aloy had expected anything else. She could sense that Kratos had been trying to make some kind of statement with his actions, the way the threat of violence had never really left his body as they left Atreus with Boudica, standing stoically on the hill. Aloy didn’t want to intrude on whatever his plan was, but as soon as they were hidden from view within a clump of trees along the river bank, questions threatened to spill from her uncontrollably.

“Are you sure about this?” She decided to limit herself to the broadest, most obvious question first.

Kratos grunted in assent. “He will be fine.”

“I was more talking about this alliance we’re aiming towards with the Iceni,” Aloy said. “If this is how the relationship is starting off, they may be less valuable allies than we need.”

“Time will tell.”

She waited for him to say more, to go on or explain, but of course he didn’t. “Maybe we shouldn’t have left him there anyway,” she said, shaking her head. “He’s basically goading Boudica to make good on her threat.”

“Atreus has a plan,” Kratos said shortly.

Aloy was surprised at that, not sure she’d heard correctly. “What?”

“He would not have acted that way without reason.”

Aloy still frowned in confusion. “I don’t understand. Acted what way?”

“We will both understand more fully with time,” he said simply, bringing that line of questioning to a clear and distinct end.

Aloy hesitated, but then couldn’t stop herself. “You looked like you were going to kill her.”

“I would have,” he said without missing a beat. Then, after a silent moment where Aloy didn’t know what to say, he gave her a sidelong glance and added, “Does that scare you?”

She blinked at the question, unsure what answer he was expecting. “I don’t scare easily,” she equivocated shifting her weight uncomfortably. “But I don’t think I would have watched.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Aloy thought she saw the barest flicker of a wince on Kratos’ face.

“For someone asking for help,” she offered lightly, “she has a lot of demands.”

“You said that this has happened to you before,” Kratos said.

Aloy looked at him questioningly. “What? Dealing with demanding people who need a lot of help?” She rolled her eyes. “More than I care to remember.”

“Meeting someone who looked like you,” Kratos said, turning his head to look down at her as they walked side by side. “Somewhere you did not expect it.”

Aloy felt off balance from the sudden topic change. “Oh,” she said dully. “Yeah. It’s happened once before.” She shook her head. “But, like I said, it’s not likely to happen again. And it wasn’t quite like that,” she gestured back at the village behind them. “Boudica only sort of looks like me; the other woman…” She fell silent, realizing that even if she wanted to explain to Kratos about Elisabet, she wouldn’t know how to begin.

Kratos wouldn’t drop it. “You said she lived hundreds of years in your past,” he said, frowning. “Have you also travelled through time before, as now?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “It’s a long, complicated story.”

“We have a long way to travel,” Kratos said. Though she couldn’t see it on his face, Aloy thought she heard a smirk in his voice.

Aloy sighed. _I guess we’re doing this_. “Well, okay, so…” she fumbled, “when humans figured out that the machines they built were going to end all life on Earth, one woman decided to try to preserve what she could and keep it safe from the machines until they could be destroyed.” Aloy’s heart swelled just talking about Elisabet. “She got a team of very smart people, and they created a sort of...well, a sort of long-term incubator for, basically, baby humans.”

Kratos grunted, interrupting her. “Incubator?” He asked.

 _Oh boy_ , she thought. “It’s a machine that brings babies to term, until they’re developed enough to eat and walk and talk on their own.”

“Mmm,” he said. She waited to see if he had other questions before going on.

“So, this machine had a lot of different parts, and while one part was working on disabling the machines that were destroying the world, another part was protecting the baby humans and animals and plants until it was safe for them to leave the machine and live in nature again.”

“So, humanity started over,” Kratos said.

Aloy looked up at him approvingly. “Yes, basically. All life had to. All from the seeds that this woman, Elisabet, saved.” She smiled small and quiet to herself. “It’s amazing how much work it took, how dedicated she was, and how much she was able to accomplish in the short lead time they had before the Plague killed everything.”

“And those humans who first left the machine after the plague had ended,” Kratos continued, “were your family?”

Aloy blinked. “Oh, no,” she said. “They lived about three hundred years before I was born. They were the ancestors of my people; the ancestors of all the humans that live in my part of the world.” _But not me,_ she thought darkly.

“What do they have to do with the woman who looked like you?”

“I’m getting to that,” she said, almost laughing. “I told you, it was a long story. You have to be patient.”

“Mmm,” he grunted.

“Not your strong suit, huh?” She smirked up at him. He said nothing. “Anyway, around the time that I was born, some things started going wrong with the big machine that was supposed to be helping the humans recreate the world. It started malfunctioning. Its programming knew that something was wrong, and that someone needed to fix it, and the machine only knew of one person who would be able to do that.”

“The woman who created it.”

Aloy blinked and looked up at him. “Yes,” she said, her voice coming out more breathy than usual. She coughed to try to hide it “Yes,” she repeated, with more confidence. “The machine wanted Elisabet because it knew her, and also because Elisabet’s body was like a key to a lot of doors that had been locked after the Plague, doors that someone would have to open to fix the machine.” Aloy felt her chest constricting. She’d never told this story before, never revealed the nature of her birth. Never told anyone exactly how alone she was in the world. _Why now?_ she thought vaguely to herself. She didn’t have a firm answer, except that she couldn’t hold the secret in anymore. Now she was this close to letting it go, it was spilling out of her.

“The machine had taken genetic material--” she hesitated. “Uh, that’s like the pieces that make up humans, before they’re born.”

“Pieces of their body?” Kratos asked with a frown.

“No,” Aloy frowned too, concentrating. “More like the plans for how to make them. Genetic material determines things like what color your eyes will be, how tall you are, that sort of thing. Your body takes that plan and puts it together bit by bit until you’re an adult.”

Kratos didn’t respond, but seemed to stare more deeply ahead of them.

“Does that make sense?”

“No,” he said. “This material is different for every person?”

“Yes,” she said. “And if you copy genetic material, you can make two people who look exactly alike, and may even have some of the same skills and abilities.” She shook her head. “For what it’s worth, it’s confusing to me, too.”

“So the machine had copies of the plans for this Elisabet?” Kratos asked, still looking straight ahead.

Aloy’s heart seemed to flutter when he said the name, which was embarrassing. “Yes, among other people. The machine wanted a copy of her specifically because that copy would be able to open all those locked doors, and might be smart enough to figure out how to fix the things that were going wrong.” She stopped short, her breath catching in her throat.

“You are that copy,” Kratos finished for her.

Tears were coming unbidden to Aloy’s eyes, and she blinked them back hard, trying to hide the thickness they brought to her voice. “Yes,” she said simply.

“So you look exactly like her?” he asked.

Aloy nodded. He glanced down at her just in time to see.

“And you were created by a machine?”

Aloy could feel the tears burning behind her eyelids. “Yes.” The lump in her throat was clearly audible. Maybe if Aloy hadn’t been raised by a Nora Brave, this impossibility of her birth wouldn’t feel like a painful, shameful secret. As it was, only Sylens knew that about her, and he’d found it out only by being an unwelcome passenger as she’d discovered it herself. All those years ago, she had nurtured a sort of hope that he could be the one person who would understand, who wouldn’t worship her for something she couldn’t control, but also wouldn’t revile her for it either. She had hoped the two of them would have something resembling a friendship, one that could be deeper and more meaningful than any others because he already knew the thing that would be hardest to explain to anyone else. But to Sylens, Aloy was a tool to be used. When she’d finally decided to be honest with herself, she’d realized that friendship with Sylens wouldn’t be what she’d imagined, so she’d buried the information deep within herself, perhaps deciding on some level that if Sylens wouldn’t have her, then nobody would.

Kratos looked down at her and stopped walking. “And yet the idea of Andraste bringing us here is ‘ridiculous’ to you?”

She stopped suddenly and looked up at him, two tears tumbling free of her eyes and running down her cheeks. “What?” she breathed, barely above a whisper.

“This machine sounds very powerful,” Kratos said. He was looking her right in the eyes; he had to see her tears, but he did not respond to them. “If it can exist, why cannot gods exist?”

Aloy felt her face fold into a grimace. “This again?” she hissed hotly.

“I am trying to understand,” Kratos said. His voice sounded subtly kinder, and his face had softened more than she’d ever seen it. It, too, caught her off guard.

“That machine is very powerful,” she said, though she couldn’t keep the frustration out of her voice. “The Nora think it is so powerful they worship it as a goddess. They call it All-Mother.” She practically spat the last words. “But it’s not a goddess. It was made by humans; it just does what it was told to do. The Nora just don’t understand it, so they call it a goddess.” She shut her eyes tight, the tears no longer flowing, the lump that had grown in her throat having melted into something angrier, less vulnerable. “Gods exist when humans turn something unexplainable into something magical, just to make the world simpler.”

Kratos tilted his head to the side inquisitively. “I do not disagree that humans have a...frustrating tendency to simplify things, and then to worship them,” he said slowly. “But where I come from, there are incredibly powerful beings who are the focus of that worship. While they’re nothing so simple as the humans believe them to be, they are capable of great and terrible things.” He paused, visibly collecting his thoughts. “This ‘All-Mother’ is one of the few gods you know of, but you said that the Plague ended all life on Earth,” he said. “Could it not have killed the gods that came before? The gods from my time and from this one?”

Aloy’s head snapped back, as though someone had just clapped in her face to surprise her. “What?”

“The beings that I know of as gods are both powerful and cruel.” He shook his head slightly. “It would be possible for some of them to transport people over land and through time, if they had reason to.”

Aloy didn’t know how to respond to that. Her head was still clouded by Kratos’ seeming disregard for what she’d considered her own monstrosity. He had seemed to take the story of ELEUTHIA-9 completely in stride as if it changed nothing. Instead, he was focusing on this other strange facet of their story. She’d never considered that gods could live, and had certainly not thought that they could die, like everything else. “You think the Faro Plague could have killed gods?”

“You said it destroyed all life,” Kratos said. “Few things are capable of killing gods, but the machines you describe could be powerful enough.” He seemed to consider that for a moment, then added, “They sound destructive enough to be gods themselves.”

Aloy said nothing.

“In fact,” Kratos continued, the lines of his brow deepening again, “the way you describe both the Plague and this All-Mother makes me wonder if, in the future, gods are no longer made of flesh and bone, but of machines.”

Aloy sighed and rolled her eyes. “Those machines were created by humans. Were gods created by humans?”

“The gods would not think so,” Kratos said. “But they would not exist without humans to worship them. I do not know if there is a difference.”

“All right,” Aloy said exasperatedly, waving her hands in front of her like she was clearing a cloud of gnats. “I’ll concede that it’s _possible_ for a god to have existed before the Faro Plague. But,” she pointed her finger at his face, inches from his nose, a small smile tugging at her eyes, “that does not mean that I believe Boudica’s story, and I certainly don’t believe the machines in my world are gods.” She started walking again. “Although,” she said, with a shrug, “if they were, I guess that would mean that I am too, since I was born from a goddess.” She looked back at him with a sly smirk. “Does that scare you?”

Kratos’ face was inscrutable, but his tone was almost playful as he said, “I do not scare easily.”

A little spark of something burned in Aloy’s chest as they walked on, her two or so paces in front of him. _Maybe it really doesn’t matter_ , the spark whispered. _Maybe “motherless” doesn’t mean what you thought it did_.

-=-=-=-=-

The sun was setting as they stepped up to the base of a tall, steep escarpment. From the moment it had come into view, Aloy had scrutinized it. By the time she reached the base, she had already mapped out the first half of her ascent.

Kratos approached the sheer rock face ahead of her. “Hold onto my shoulders and I will bring us to the top,” he said without looking at her. She thought she saw a shiver of a flex pass through his upper back, which sent a mirror of it down her own spine.

But then the reality of what he was suggesting fully resonated with her, and she laughed out loud. “Uh, no,” she said, raising an eyebrow at him as she stepped up to stand next to him and peer up at the foot and hand holds she had already chosen.

He turned to look at her. “I have done this with Atreus many times,” he said. “I assure you, you will not fall.”

She felt a little twinge of something in her stomach as their eyes met, and she couldn’t help the proud little smirk that leaked onto her face. “I don’t need your assurance,” she said. Then, with only the slightest pause to adjust her weight, she leapt up two feet and grabbed an outcropping with both hands. Quickly, she pulled herself up and, pushing off with her toes while simultaneously reaching with her arms, she caught another ledge far above and began the ladder-like climb that the closer crags and fissures afforded her. She didn’t look down to see Kratos face, though she dearly wished she could.

When she reached the top, she turned back and looked over the ground now dozens of feet below her. The warm stretching sensation in the backs of her arms reminded her that it had been days since she’d climbed anything. It was a welcome feeling; it had familiarity like the smell of home or the sound of her name.

Still on the cliff, Kratos steadily climbed towards her, only about six feet or so behind. He was using many of the same holds she had found, but was able to skip some here and there due to his height. His pace was slower, but consistent, and when he reached the top and pushed himself over the ledge, he hadn’t even broken a sweat.

He stood up, maintaining eye contact as he rose first to her height and then to tower over her. There were shadows in his eyes that she didn’t recognize; her instincts told her to be frightened, but she couldn’t seem to pull fear out of the flurry of other feelings they stirred in her.

“You climb well,” Kratos said, his voice low, like the purr of an engine.

She couldn’t help the smile that threatened to take control over her face. “Better than Atreus, evidently,” she said. Then she shrugged. “I had to get good at it, to survive as an outcast.”

“Mmm,” he purred, sending goosebumps up and down her arms. She forced herself to turn away and walk on.

Ahead of them, a small patch of trees loomed over the cliff, but it was thin enough that Aloy could already see through to the other side. In the graying of dusk, a fire was visible, though the light’s exact source was obscured by the walls of huts, much like the huts they had already seen at the past two Iceni villages. This had to be Boudica’s village, and they had arrived earlier than expected.

Aloy crouched as she passed into the trees, hiding most of herself in either the thick underbrush or behind a thin trunk. She heard, clear as day, as Kratos tried to creep up behind her.

“If you go in there,” she whispered back without looking at him, “Boudica will just have to send another rescue party in after us.”

After a moment’s pause, he said, “What do you suggest?”

“I sneak in and find where they have Betrys,” she said, “and then I come back out and we strategize, based on what I see.” He said nothing. “If all goes well, I can get in and out without their notice,” she continued, “so no matter what, don’t come in after me unless you hear a commotion, okay?”

“All right,” he said. “I will wait here for you.”

She rolled her shoulders back before creeping forward, trying to shake the feeling of his voice from her skin. As she approached the edge of the village, she tapped on her focus, in part just to bring her mind back to the task at hand. For soldiers who had only recently taken over this town, the occupiers didn’t station a very strong guard presence around the perimeter. Aloy saw only one or two yellow silhouettes between her and what must have been the center of town. Nevertheless, she crawled toward them quietly.

The large fire in the center was clearly a fixture in what must have been the town square. It was surrounded by sturdy benches and logs where most of the soldiers were sitting with bowls in their laps and wineskins resting on their knees. They talked loudly over each other, and many were already visibly drunk.

Aloy perched carefully behind a fencepost, covered in the shadows cast by some of the men standing near the fire, and looked around for any sign of where they might be keeping their prisoners. This village was much smaller than the one at the top of the hillfort, but more tightly packed than the one farther north. The space felt more cramped, like it could fit more people. Aloy used the focus to peer around corners and down alleys until she found one of the larger huts with two armed guards stationed at the door. Inside, her focus lit up five blue silhouettes, people sitting or crouching, one laying down. None were tied, but they were all clearly trapped.

The guards here were at attention, displaying the discipline that Aloy supposed all the other soldiers might have if they considered themselves “on duty” right now. They each wore a strange metal shirt, overlaid with round metal plates, and had iron helmets and tall, wooden spears with sharpened iron heads. But they also had leather belts, from which hung faded red sashes and what looked like decorative cords with tassels. They looked like a strange cross between Oseram Arrowbreakers and Carja Silks, two of Aloy’s least favorite armor sets to wear, and both with completely different uses. Whatever people these men represented were clearly a mixture of the glittering ceremony of the Carja with the warrior pragmatism of the Oseram. This whole setting felt like what Aloy had always imagined the Red Raids must have been.

If these huts were like the others Aloy had been in, and she assumed they were, there would be only one door. But that did not mean there was only one way in. She circled around to the back of the hut, careful to avoid the eye of a pair of soldiers coming back from relieving themselves somewhere on the outskirts of the village. As with all the huts she’d seen before, the roof swung low to the ground in at the back, almost creating a ramp straight from the ground, with just a foot or two clearance. Aloy tested the give of the thatch, pressing her hand against it and putting gradually more and more of her weight until she was confident that it could hold her if she climbed gingerly. Careful to make as little noise as possible she reached the peak and craned her neck to get the briefest glimpse down through the hole in the center of the roof.

The room below was dark except for the warm glow of a low fire in the clay oven. The people inside were all hunched around, not moving much, waiting miserably for whatever punishment or torture had been promised them by their captors.  Everyone in the hut looked to be wearing the same kind of loosely draped tunics, belted at the waist, like Boudica and her soldiers had been wearing. Aloy’s heart raced as she tried to decide her next action.

“ _Mo bhanrigh_?” One of the men on the ground whispered up to her: the top of her head was not fully concealed behind the thatch.

Aloy rolled carefully back into place to look down into the hut again. “No,” she whispered back, sticking her head through the hole in the roof and hoping her voice didn’t carry outside. “She sent me.” Aloy planted her hands on either side of the opening and lowered herself into the room below. She felt arms wrap around her knees as someone helped her come silently to the ground.

She looked at the faces around her; they were scratched and bruised, and their eyes were dead, lacking any hope or joy. One woman stood out to Aloy: looking into her face was like looking into a mirror.

“Betrys,” she whispered, then looked around at the others. “Boudica sent me to find out how to get you all out of here.” She tapped her focus and set it to track the two guards outside. So far, they did not seem to have sensed anything suspicious.

“You may have gotten in,” Betrys said, her voice soft and gravelly. “But there are too many of us to get out without notice.” A cut above her lip opened as she spoke. “We cannot fight them off. We have no weapons.”

Something in the way Betrys was holding herself made Aloy’s blood run cold. She couldn’t name it, but she recognized it. It was a posture that she’d seen in some of the Shadow Carja outside of Sunfall, as well as in the Shadow Carja’s prisoners who’d survived the Red Raids.

Aloy tried to put the feeling from her mind, though it clawed at the back of her consciousness like a fox in a crate. She appraised their situation, comparing it in her mind to the bandit camps she’d liberated and the Eclipse bases she’d emptied. There were only five prisoners here, and she had seen at least thirty men around the campfire in the center of town. Betrys was right in that it would be near impossible for all of the prisoners to escape out the roof without the guards outside noticing, and then it would only be a matter of moments before any fight they could muster would be lost.

“Boudica plans to attack in two days with a war party,” she said, her whispers barely a breath. “If I came back before then and brought you weapons, could you fight your way out while the rest fought their way in?” The men glanced around at each other, sizing each other up. No one wanted to be the only one to say no, but Aloy could see the fear in their eyes. She leveled her own gaze on Betrys. “What do you think?”

“Quiet in there.” A sharp bark came from beyond the door, and Aloy saw, in the flickering light of the low fire, Betrys’ face drain in color and her eyes roll back in her head. It only lasted a second, but Aloy immediately realized what she’d missed.

The women looked at each other and wordless understanding passed between them. Aloy couldn’t have come up with words to say if she’d wanted to, and Betrys saw that in the wideness of her eyes. Betrys’ own eyes went hard and fierce, and she pushed herself to stand up straighter before looking away.

“We would need other fighters with us,” a man said, his ear only inches behind Aloy. She almost jumped out of her skin as his breath floated past her. “If you could bring in a stealth group ahead of the warparty, they could make up for what we lack.”

Aloy looked past him as she thought. If the soldiers in the village stayed at this level of disarray for two days, she and a handful of the Iceni and possibly Atreus could come in the same way she had, and protect the prisoners as they cut their way through to freedom. The only question was whether this two-front strategy would favor the Iceni and their surprise or the Romans and their numbers.

And then there was Betrys. She was the only woman in the group, and she was the most bruised and bloody. Unless she got her wounds cleaned and dressed, she might not last the two days Boudica said she would take, especially if beatings continued.

“Can you come with me now?” Aloy asked, mouthing the words more than speaking them and pointing to the hole in the roof.

Betrys’ eyes went wide and her expression looked almost horrified as she shook her head aggressively. At first Aloy didn’t understand, but then Betrys looked around her at the men in the hut, and then shook her head again.

 _If she goes missing, the rest of them could die_.

-=-=-=-=-

Kratos was kneeling right where she’d left him. She crouched low as she walked towards him, and his eyes followed her intently. When she made it to his side, she felt the tension in her back that she didn’t realize she’d had finally relax. It was as if she’d been hiding from more than just guards the entire time she’d been in the camp.

“What did you find?” he asked. She guided him away from the trees, towards the cliff they’d ascended.

“There are only five prisoners, and they’re being kept in a hut back from the center of town.” Still crouching, she used her finger to draw a little map in the dirt at her feet. “Betrys is there, and she’s alive, but…” She didn’t know how to put into words the thing she feared had happened.

Kratos didn’t speak, but she thought she could see in his face a grim comprehension of her silence.

“If we come back with a larger group who can sneak in, I think we can fight the Romans from two sides. Between that and taking them by surprise, we should have a chance.” She looked at him for some kind of acknowledgement or agreement.

“The prisoners are strong enough for that?”

Aloy shook her head. “I don’t know.  The main battle is going to come from the outside.”

“Mmm,” Kratos said. “How many men guard the camp?”

“I saw at least thirty,” Aloy said. “They have good armor and weapons, and I think they can be well organized when they want to be. Have you seen any on patrol out here?” She tapped her focus and glanced quickly around, but saw no yellow silhouettes.

“A few have come and gone,” he said. “No more than five or six.”

“Do you think Boudica’s people can handle those numbers?” Aloy was a detail person when it came to war. Her understanding of big-picture strategy was rudimentary at best.

At first Kratos said nothing and didn’t look at her. His expression was almost furtive, like he was trying to quickly store something away before she saw it.

“What?” she asked. “What is it?”

Kratos shook his head. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “Boudica’s war party, you, Atreus, and I should be able to overcome thirty or forty men.” He still wouldn’t meet her eyes.

Again she found herself wanting more from him. She thought back to his enigmatic proclamation of “Atreus has a plan,” and wished she had pushed him more then. But this was not the time or place. She remembered the ice in Betrys’ eyes as she’s stretched herself as tall as she could. “Then let’s go get them.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to edit this one because I'm a dufus. Enjoy!


	12. The Other Princess

"Your father is as much a bear as a man." The young woman who came to sit next to Atreus on the wooden log around the fire was unmistakably Alis. Even if he hadn't watched her the previous day follow him around like a duckling behind its mother, Atreus would have immediately recognized the deep red hair and rounded face as Boudica's daughter.

"Your mother is more difficult than she has a right to be, given the situation." He didn't look up, but continued carving into his worn stick with Laufey's knife. 

"She must protect her people." Her voice was gentler than Boudica's, but it had the same deep, darkness that commanded attention. When Atreus had remembered yesterday that Alis was the younger daughter, he’d wondered vaguely if she had different methods of wielding leadership than her mother or sister did. 

"She asked for our help," Atreus said with little more than a side glance over at her. "To consider us untrustworthy and to treat me like some prisoner of war seems...foolish. She was the one who told us that your goddess sent us here." 

Alis seemed almost to shrug. "The goddess' motives cannot be so easily divined. Perhaps you have been sent to unravel the Iceni in the chaos of the Roman occupation." 

Atreus looked over at her. "You don't trust Andraste?" 

She was looking into the fire, the low flicker reflecting in her eyes. "The gods will do whatever best serves their interests. We can only hope that they want our victory as much as we do." 

Atreus looked more closely at her, his head swimming. Her outline had continuously guttered since he’d first seen her, like a shadow cast by an unstable source. Atreus felt like he would be shown the answer to his questions as much as she might answer them with words. But he knew better than to try to make guesses when a vision was still forming; he’d needed to stay behind, to keep her near and speaking to him until her light became more steady. 

"Has this happened before?" he asked. “A prayer being answered this way, I mean.”

She shrugged again. “All answers are unexpected.”

Her appearance was as vague and dodging as her answers, and Atreus was beginning to understand that as a quality of her as a person. She was fluid, constantly moving and stepping lightly, careful not to leave tracks. 

“What do you hope will happen from all of this?” he asked. “What would be the best possible outcome?”

She breathed in deeply, as if inhaling the smoke of the fire like incense, and paused to consider the question. “The best outcome is unknowable,” she said, “but likely will require battle, possibly even war.” She closed her eyes slowly. “My hope is that we win that war."

Atreus baby fought in a war before, but in her words he saw Baldur, Modi, and Magni: children whose parents had, in one way or another, created battles that would kill them in the end. Had they even known why they were fighting? Had they ever made the decision consciously for themselves? 

Was Alis just more of the same? 

"You think me naive," she said. She shimmered less now, solidifying in a surprising and forceful way.

Atreus appraised her, trying to come up with something to say. 

"That's fine," she said before he could respond. "You wonder if I blindly fight for my mother's values." She gave a little shrug. "Blindness occurs not when the eyes do not see, but when they choose not to." She looked into his eyes, and for a moment he felt exposed, almost violated. “I am not blind.”

The words were, like her shimmery form, more than they let on. Like a knife through thick cream, she cut through pretense, charade, facade, and struck at Atreus’ core. If his innermost being was a solid feature of his body, it would be a bell that her voice had just struck, sending resonant shivers from his core to the tips of his fingers.

_ She knows _ , he thought.

Her eyes flashed, and he almost heard her voice respond,  _ Yes. _

“Oy!” A bark of a cry sailed over their heads from the southern gate. “They’ve come back!”

“Alert  _ bhanrigh _ .”

Alis hadn’t looked away from Atreus, but the prick of her gaze had dulled. She didn’t smile, but he felt a warm triumph in her expression. Where he might otherwise have felt frightened, or at the very least threatened, he was instead intrigued.

“I am not blind,” she said again. In a smooth movement, she rose from her seat and turned, her tunic flaring out around her as she walked off towards the gate.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the delay! I meant to only take one week off for the US holiday, but then I had some family craziness and I've been unexpectedly travelling for a couple of weeks. This chapter was difficult to write but I hope you find it valuable ;)


	13. Returned

"Oy! They’ve come back!”

They had run against exhaustion through the early morning, and Kratos could feel his need to rest tickling the back of his mind like the sweat on his eyebrows tickled his face. He had expected Aloy to ask to stop, or at least to slow, but she never had. He could see by the look on her face and the set of her shoulders that she was powering through pain and breathlessness, and was determined to continue to do so for as long as necessary. 

Though they could hear the calls of the guards, there was still an expanse in front of them that would take minutes to cross. Time enough to have the discussion they'd put off in favor of expediency. 

Kratos put out his arm and slowed to a walk. "What will we tell them?" 

Aloy looked annoyed even as she fought to speak through her heaving breaths. "What we saw." After a breath, she added, "What we planned."

"Those are two separate things," Kratos said leveling his eyes on her. "One of them is more instrumental than the other to our cause." 

Aloy shook her head, her fingers digging into her side just below her ribs. "Don't be all mysterious now." Her eyes shut tight against what was clearly pain she felt only now that they'd stopped running. "Just say what you're thinking." 

"I do not believe Boudica will want to know the desperation of the people she had to leave behind." 

Aloy rolled her eyes and gulped a breath. "What possible difference could that make? It's not like she won't rescue them." 

Kratos did not blink as he continued to look at her. 

Her eyebrows dug into her forehead. "Kratos," she said ineffectually. "Come on. Betrys is her daughter." 

"Weakness has different meanings to people like the Iceni." 

"Weakness?" Her expression was incredulous. "What kind of people would see a prisoner struggling to survive and call her weak?"

Kratos didn't say anything, but continued his deep look into her eyes.  _ Tremblers,  _ he had called them. They survived a battle but still lost. To be a prisoner required surrender. Maybe Boudica would overlook her people's inability to overpower their captors. Maybe Boudica would pity her daughter's vulnerability. Maybe she wouldn't. 

"We tell them the two-front strategy you devised. We tell them it is best to strike at night. We tell them their people are still alive." Kratos shook his head. "We let them find out the rest for themselves."

Aloy's shoulders bobbed slowly up and down, but her breaths had grown quiet. Her eyes were hard and defiant. She said nothing. 

They had reached the base of the hillfort and soldiers were running to meet them. Before they were close, and in a low voice, Kratos said, “Do not make mention of Betrys’ violation.”

Aloy’s face hardened even further. Kratos had not explicitly stated what he had known from the moment Boudica mentioned that her daughter was imprisoned, and Kratos now expected that Aloy had hoped it couldn’t be true. But war is war, whether it is Greek or Roman, and the weak are treated as prey. Maybe things were different in the future Aloy spoke of, when humans were fewer and their battles smaller. Perhaps the victors were not so cruel and power was not enforced by the fist and the blade. Kratos doubted that.

“Did you get in?” one of the soldiers called as he came within yelling range. “Are our men alive?”

“ _ Bhanrigh  _ is on her way,” another soldier said as he approached. It wasn’t clear to Kratos what purpose the men thought they would serve when they reached the place where he and Aloy were walking, continuing towards the entrance to the fort. They merely fell into stride and peppered them with questions that Kratos ignored.

As Kratos crested the peak of the hill and the village came into view, Kratos felt a wave of relief pass over him like a shiver when he saw Atreus standing near the entrance next to a young woman who had to be Boudica’s other daughter. The boy’s face was drawn and anxious but he looked unharmed and was not bound in anyway. Kratos quickly closed the gap between them.

“Atreus,” he said, scanning his son from head to toe, looking for unfamiliar bruises or cuts, especially at the boy’s wrists and neck. “You are all right?” 

When Atreus spoke, his voice was quiet and unsteady. “Yes father,” he said, and he clearly planned to continue, but Kratos shook his head quickly to silence him.

“We must speak to Boudica, and then you and I can talk.” There was something in that look, a fear similar to what young Atreus used to wear prominently on his face after a failure in battle or during a coughing fit that kept him from speaking.

“Yes, father,” he said, his expression trying to burn an imprint of importance onto Kratos’ mind.

“It will not take long,” he assured his son.

“What did you see?” Boudica came out from behind a hut, her tunic covered by a long, thick, two-colored square of fabric that was bound by a large iron broach at her shoulder. The paint on her face had been refreshed and the braids in her hair restrung. These were the signs of her royalty, the symbols that empowered her. She stood out from her soldiers now, not just by her height or her hair, but by their mutual recognition of her status. Kratos recognized the beginning efforts to bolster the troops.

Kratos avoided looking at Aloy when he spoke. “There are five or so prisoners being held in a guarded hut. Aloy spoke with them.”

“Betrys was there,” Aloy added from behind him. Her voice was stony.

“I see you did not bring them back with you,” Boudica said, her town inscrutable.

“The Romans’ defenses are large in number but lacking in vigilance. We might have gotten the prisoners out, but it would have been at great risk to your plan to retake the village.”

“Betrys agreed with me that you should send in a stealth vanguard to reach the prisoners and assist their escape,” Aloy said. “They need weapons and support, but they will fight their way out.”

Boudica’s face seemed to soften, almost imperceptibly. Kratos saw a mirror of the relief he had felt himself just moments ago when he’d seen Atreus alive and unharmed. “We have several warriors available for such a task,” she said.

“I’ll lead them in first, and on my signal, your army can attack from the outside,” Aloy said. “We should be able to split their force and take them by surprise.”

“How large is their garrison?” Boudica pressed.

“Forty men,” Aloy said. “They’re each well equipped and armored.”

Boudica’s eyes narrowed in thought and she scanned the small crowd of villagers and warriors around her. “We will not be outmatched,” she considered, “but the outcome could rest on a hair’s breadth.”

“Atreus and I will go in first with Aloy,” Kratos said. Then, with a single raised eyebrow, he added, “Assuming we have proven ourselves trustworthy.”

Boudica stood stiffly, considering him. From her expression it was clear that no, she did not trust them. But he could see her calculating, trying to guess how many Romans he could take down with his bare hands before her warriors even knocked their arrows. He recognized a leader’s desperation.

“My warriors and I will moot,” she said. “There is much to decide.”

Kratos merely nodded. Boudica turned and her soldiers went with her. Out of the corner of his eye, Kratos could see Boudica’s other daughter leave Atreus’ side and follow in her mother’s wake.

Aloy huffed a frustrated growl. “This is ridiculous,” she said. “How is there ‘much to decide’?” She rolled her eyes. “How are we still an enemy?”

“Their relationship with Andraste is more complicated than I thought,” Atreus said, speaking at full volume for the first time. “They believe she brought us here, but they don’t know if that’s a good thing.”

Aloy blinked slowly and shook her head, as if Atreus’ words were spoken in some other language. “I don’t understand.”

“I spoke with Alis,” Atreus said. He caught Kratos’ eye, and Kratos could see that there was more to the story than whatever Atreus was about to share. “They believe Andraste may have brought us here to foil Boudica’s plans.”

“And what are those plans, exactly?” Aloy asked with a sigh.

Atreus looked again at Kratos before answering. “It’s like she told us before; she plans to drive the Romans from her people’s lands, or kill every last one of them. She hopes that Andraste will bless their battles, but she fears that she may not.”

Aloy threw her head back and closed her eyes. In that moment, she looked every bit as tired as Kratos assumed she had to be, having spent most of the last twelve hours travelling on foot in the dark. “I’m going to stop trying to understand,” she said. “You will just have to translate for me from spiritual nonsense to actual strategy whenever you figure out what we’re supposed to do here so we can get home.” She rubbed her eyes with the tips of her fingers and sighed deeply. “For now, I’m going to go find some food and a dark place to sleep until someone tells me it’s time to actually do something.” She half-heartedly waved a hand at them before wandering off, apparently following the trail of smoke that lead to a fragrant cooking fire a few huts away.

Kratos watched her go.  _ Gods exist when humans turn something unexplainable into something magical, just to make the world simpler. _ Again, her words hung in his brain like the tune of a half-known song.  _ I was born of a goddess _ , she had said, apparently joking. But Kratos could hear in her story the same exasperation he often felt. The frustration that came with disillusionment, with cynical godhood. Whether or not she believed herself divine, someone did.  _ She is unexplainable _ , Kratos thought to himself.  _ I would not fault a man who worshipped her. _

“Father, Alis knows.” 

Kratos came back to himself, having only just caught Atreus’ words. “Knows what?”

Atreus glanced around furtively before drawing closer to Kratos and speaking in a lower voice. “About us.”

Kratos blinked down at his son, staring through him and not really seeing him. Anger flared in him and he felt his fists blistering with heat as if he had stuck them in a bucket of hot coals. “How?”

Atreus shook his head. “I don’t know exactly.” He looked around him, as if trying to pull the answer from the air. “She’s different somehow,” he said, his tone darkening. “It’s like when I met Mimir for the first time, tied to that tree. She’s…” he frowned trying to find the word. “She’s between things, like Mimir is. She’s not a god, but she’s not just a human, either. There’s more to her than I can see.” He looked back at his father. “And there’s more that she can see than I thought was possible.”

Kratos huffed, his voice catching as a growl in the back of his throat. “She has certainly told Boudica by now.” At best, they would be imprisoned as soon as the Iceni could decide how to do it. At worst, and more likely, they would have to kill their way through the tribe’s weakened ranks just to make it out alive. 

Atreus shifted uneasily. “I...I’m not sure.”

“Atreus.” To Kratos it wasn’t a question.

“I know,” Atreus said, his voice rising in pitch, making him sound again like the little boy begging to go hunting with his father. “But the way she talked about Boudica…” he trailed off, his eyes glazing over.

Kratos recognized the expression, and waited for it to pass.

“Alis thinks of Boudica the way she thinks of the goddess,” Atreus said after a moment, returning to the present. “She knows and respects their power, but she doesn’t really trust either of them.” He teetered, unsteady on his feet. “If she hasn’t told her by now, I’m not sure she will.”

Kratos could see the effort Atreus was putting into the conversation, as though he was being blown about by a strong wind and had to anchor himself to stay standing. This didn’t happen often; Kratos could only remember three other times when Atreus had come unmoored in this way. One of those times, Kratos had had to go to Hel and back to save his son from an unearthly sickness. After that, Atreus had learned of his godhood and that knowledge seemed to give him strength and direction. But the most recent time he had been overcome by his own power was the morning they left for the hunt that would send them to Boudica’s lands. Atreus had said he was uneasy about leaving the house, but when Kratos had asked why, Atreus couldn’t explain. And in the end, they had gone anyway.

“What are you seeing?” he asked his son.

Atreus shook his head, closing his eyes and pressing his fingertips against his forehead. “It’s not clear yet,” he said. “It’s like...it’s like swimming in cloudy water, where all the shapes look shadowy and you can’t determine distances.” He shook his head again, his eyes squeezing shut now. “Everything feels dangerous, malicious even, but...but I don’t think we’re meant to be frightened. I don’t think we’re not safe.”

Kratos looked down at his son, his brow deeply furrowed and a steady drumbeat hammering in his ears. “Is Alis an enemy? Can you tell that much?” 

Atreus didn’t speak for a moment. Then, suddenly, his eyes shot open and he looked up at Kratos as if he was coming up for air. “I...I don’t think she is,” he said. “I’m not sure though. I don’t even know that she’s who my visions are about anymore.”

Even as Atreus spoke, Alis walked out from behind a hut where she and Boudica had disappeared just moments earlier. She wasn’t looking at Kratos, but his gaze was pinned to her, following her like she had tied a line to him and was pulling him along. 

_ I was born of a goddess _ , a voice came unbidden into his head, and though the words were Aloy’s, the voice was not.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, my monolingual understanding is that Bhanrigh = “vaun-ree-gh” where the gh is sort of like a gutteral sound in the back of the throat.
> 
> If that's wrong...I am both unsuprised and supremely apologetic.


	14. The Tree

The Iceni’s food was not too different from what Aloy had grown up eating with Rost in the Embrace: small, simple selections of berries and mushrooms, some stewed to relieve their bitter taste, some dressed in the grease reserved from the last meal of meat. Aloy had tried to trade one of her last pieces of silver for a bowl full of something an Iceni woman was doling out of a hot iron pot, but the woman hadn’t even acknowledged the money. She’d narrowed her eyes critically, clearly trying to decide what she thought of Aloy, and then passed her a bowl and turned quickly away. Aloy didn’t know if that was a good or bad sign, but accepted the food and sucked in its hearty aroma.

Her thoughts were blessedly blank, her legs pleasantly sore, and her lungs still recovering from one of the longer nights she could remember. She was glad that Kratos had agreed to travel back immediately; after he and Atreus had refused to travel at night that first evening they had all met together, Aloy worried they would be wasting half the day every day. But last night, as they’d run through the unfamiliar trees, cloaked in darkness as the waning moon’s light barely made it through the canopy, Aloy had realized what Atreus had meant when he’d said it wasn’t safe to travel at night. 

He’d mentioned that some predators hunt at night, which Aloy hadn’t understood at the time. But as she’d run through the underbrush in near-total darkness, she’d realized that, in the Sundom and the Sacred lands, predators, especially the really dangerous ones, were more visible at night than any other time, and their habits of grazing near settlements meant that most of the well-travelled routes were well-lit even during a new moon. A looming fear of ever-lurking dangers had pushed her forward throughout the night; she shuddered at the idea of pausing long enough to make an easy target for whatever huge animals waited along the path for them.

Even without that, though, it was useful to work her muscles that hard for that long; running was almost better than sleeping at giving her space to think, even about the things her conscious mind didn’t want to address. Things like Betrys’ face, bruised, terrified, and defiant. Like Kratos’ insinuation that she might not be accepted back into the Iceni because she had surrendered, an insinuation that suggested Kratos might not accept prisoners who came to him for help. Aloy knew better than to ask  _ what kind of society shuns their most vulnerable at their time of greatest need _ , since she had yet to meet a tribe that  _ didn’t _ do that in some way. But she’d never met a person who she could respect who treated people like that. 

Except Rost. Rost had maintained blind obedience to Nora tribal law at the cost of everything, including her relationship with him. If he hadn’t been killed in the Proving, he still would have made it so they never saw each other again, all because the Nora said it wasn’t right. Aloy had adored Rost, but she’d had to overlook his stubborn piety in order to do it. Could she do that for anyone else? Did she want to?

Seated on the berm around the hillfort, her legs stretched lazily out before her, Aloy tapped her focus. No one was around to watch, but she tried to keep her interactions with the images inconspicuous. The folder of recently captured images lay open where she’d left it days ago, only now there were new files. An annotated snapshot of the Romans’ armor; a short video clip of Betrys reacting to the guard’s voice at the hut door; Kratos’ back, running through the forest, somehow lit by a blue glow from his axe.

Aloy pulled that image to the center and zoomed in on the axe. The image took a moment to clarify, and when it did, it revealed the intricacy of the axe head. Symbols were deftly chiseled, not just into the decorative lugs where the blade met the shaft, but even on the blade itself. The focus scanned them briefly, but didn’t appear to ascribe any meaning to them. Small, shining gems had been inset into the lugs, and Aloy could just barely make out that they, too, had etchings on their faces. She zoomed in again, and this time the focus outlined the symbols as glyphs.

_ Tyr’s Revenge _ , the bottom one read;  _ Ivaldi’s Anvil _ , the top. Below those, a third symbol, one Aloy wouldn’t have considered as anything more than decoration, read  _ Huldra Brothers _ .

“Huldra brothers?” Aloy said out loud.

“The dwarves who forged Mjolnir.” A soft voice came from somewhere to Aloy’s right, making her jump. She looked over to see Alis standing between the nearest hut and the berm.

“Shit,” Aloy breathed, willing her heart to stop racing. “How long have you been standing there?”

“I wanted to offer you my hut to rest in.” Her voice was low and quiet but definitely not timid. Unlike Boudica, Alis’ eyes were the same brownish green as Aloy’s, and she was slightly taller. At the back of Aloy’s mind, a familiar voice said  _ Hold for Identiscan _ .

“Oh,” Aloy said. “Okay.” She made to push herself off the berm, but then remembered something Alis had just said. “Wait, you know the Huldra brothers?”

Alis tilted her head to the side, half a shrug. “I have heard of them,” she said.

“You said they forged...what was it?” Aloy was still hovering a few inches off the ground, caught in the act of standing.

“Mjolnir,” Alis said. “Among other great weapons.”

“What is...Mjolnir?” Aloy asked.

“The hammer of Thor, the god of thunder.”

Aloy sighed and finished getting to her feet. “Oh,” she said, disappointed. “So the Huldra brothers are gods.”

“No,” Alis said dismissively. “Though they do associate with gods.”

“Right,” Aloy rolled her eyes. “Don’t we all.”

Alis laughed. “My hut is this way, if you’ll follow,” she said, turning back towards the village.

 

-=-=-=-=-=-

“I don’t think it’s going to be the same as always,” Atreus was saying to Kratos as Aloy walked up behind them. It was late afternoon now, and the men were sitting on upturned logs positioned around an unlit campfire. Atreus appeared to be in the middle of crafting arrows for himself, while Kratos stared deep into the dark coals. “It’s not that I think they’ll be bad at fighting, exactly. But if Aloy’s right and we’ve travelled through time, we don’t know  _ how _ they fight, and we don’t know where we fit in.”

“Mm,” Kratos hummed, sending a shiver up Aloy’s arms.

“Are you talking about the Iceni?” Aloy asked, rather uselessly.

Atreus didn’t seem surprised to hear her approach, but Kratos could have broken his neck the way he turned to look at her suddenly.

“Yes,” Atreus said, glancing slightly at his father, and then returning to Aloy. “I was just trying to convince father that we should train with their soldiers at least once before we march on the town. We don’t want our first look at their fighting style to come when it’s the difference between life and death.”

Aloy frowned. “I don’t know,” she said, sitting down on a log near Atreus. “It’s never been a problem for me.” She thought back to her battles alongside the Carja and the Oseram. “I’ve never trained with anyone, and I’ve always come out alive on the other side.”

“What manner of armies have you served that they never trained?” Kratos asked.

Aloy’s eyes narrowed as they met his. “Winning ones,” she said with a smirk and a raised eyebrow.

Atreus looked between them as they seemed to quibble silently with their eyes. Aloy was almost enjoying herself, but Atreus chimed in, “I think either way would work fine. I’m just saying that I would be more comfortable if I could see the Iceni in action.” He seemed to consider for a moment, and then added, “And they might have important information on how the Romans fight. Maybe it would help to know what to expect from our enemies as well.”

Again, Kratos and Aloy wordlessly agreed that Atreus would do the talking, so Atreus was the one to bring up the idea of training to Boudica. Aloy wasn’t at all surprised that Boudica focused heavily on the Iceni relaying information about the Romans to Kratos, Aloy, and Atreus. Boudica barely acknowledged Atreus’ other anxieties, though he didn’t seem too fussed about that. 

There wasn’t much space on the hillfort that wasn’t occupied by villagers or their homes, so the soldiers led them down onto the plains below, into the open expanse between the forest and the fort.

“Are there dummies we’ll practice with?” Aloy said, remembering fondly the grazer statues Rost and other Nora had built, first for target practice, and then eventually, after they had outlived their usefulness, as small shrines to self-discipline. 

“We have wooden blades and shields,” one of the Iceni said, pulling a large satchel off his back. He was one of the guards who had originally led Aloy, Kratos, and Atreus to Boudica’s hut when they’d first come to the fort. “Untipped spears. Softened arrows. The like.”

Aloy looked at the weapons that spilled out onto the ground as he untied the lashing. They were like toy versions of what the Iceni carried, like something you might give to children. “So we just...fight each other? Like we’re enemies?” 

“It is the best way to learn your strengths and weaknesses,” he said, handing her an overlong wooden staff. “To feel the blow is to know the technique.”

The fake spear felt strangely light in her hands. It had no blade on the end, so it required no counter weight on the shaft. “If you say so,” she said, looking over at Kratos. The Iceni was trying to hand him a silly looking sword, complete with a meaningless crossguard. Kratos’ arms were crossed over his chest and a single eyebrow was raised. Aloy actually saw a blush rise in the Iceni’s cheeks as he realized he was on the losing side of this standoff.

“How will you fight?” the soldier asked, stretching himself to his fullest height. Aloy almost laughed, remembering the number of times she’d seen someone do that when speaking to Kratos. 

“This is not a test of my skill,” Kratos said, immobile as stone. “I will observe you now so that I may know later how best to keep you out of my way.”

Aloy  _ snrrk _ ed into her shoulder, and she saw Atreus flinch, though his back was to the conversation. 

“No man is an army unto himself,” the soldier said, driving the tip of his wooden sword into the grass at his feet. “Don’t act as though you’ll be taking on the Romans one on one.”

“Which of the two of us has lost a battle to these Romans?” Kratos growled, his voice low.

Aloy felt her heartbeat quicken.  Atreus looked mildly horrified. 

In a flurry, he took up the sword again and pointed it at Kratos’ chest. It may have been a threatening gesture if the sword had been real, or if Kratos had had a smaller chest.

“You may look powerful, but you are as vulnerable as any man. If you think you’re so much better than us, why don’t you use your weapons instead of words?”

Kratos blinked slowly. “Are you asking me to hit you?” His arms were still across his chest, and Aloy thought she saw his biceps flex. Her heart was racing and that familiarly unfamiliar rush of adrenaline burned in her stomach.

“You’re coming with me into battle,” the soldier said, his face very red now. “Prove to me why I should trust you with my life.”

For a long moment, Kratos merely looked down at the man, who seemed to become denser before Aloy’s eyes as all of his lean muscles tightened in impotent rage. Aloy wondered if she might finally see him take his axe from its hook on his back and use it for more than cutting meat.

Again, invisible flames seemed to ripple off of Kratos’ shoulders. Aloy couldn’t see them, but she still somehow perceived them, and though she knew they had to be there, she also knew she could have described them if someone asked her to. Kratos stepped back from the soldier and brought his fists down to his sides, and for a moment, Aloy was sure he was going to tackle him. Instead, Kratos took five huge strides that made the ground shake like a tallneck, stalking up to the edge of the forest.

With an enormous yell that boomed off the walls of the hillfort and sent small birds fleeing from the canopy, Kratos swung his arm back and plowed it into the nearest tree trunk. It took three punches, quick in succession, flamelessly firey, and the trunk splintered into kindling around his fists. Before it could topple backwards, he swung one arm around it and hoisted it onto his shoulder. The trunk slid down through the crook of his elbow, sending bark flying like bullet casings, until it came to the weighted center, at which point Kratos turned back to face the Iceni. The top branches of the tree just barely scraped against the trunks of the others that were still standing.

Aloy could see up into the shattered trunk. It was not hollow inside, eaten by insects or animals. Minutes ago, that tree had been as solid as any of the others, and had likely been standing for decades, even centuries. It was thick enough around that Kratos’ huge arm could only cradle it, unable to wrap fully around it. Aloy forgot to breathe.

The Iceni gathered around stared, eyes wide. All the color had drained from the soldier’s skin, and he looked shrunken, like he was somehow cowering while standing still. Kratos closed the gap between them, causing the man to skitter backwards like a spider. In a single fluid, though enormous motion, Kratos tossed the dead tree to the side. It crashed to the ground three feet from where they stood. He grunted, pumping his fists once before crossing his arms over his chest again and staring down at the man.

No one said anything. Atreus’ eyes were closed, his fingers pressed to his temple, as though he were willing the entire scene to disappear.

“This is not a test of my skill,” Kratos said again, his voice a low rumble like far off thunder. “Show us how you fight, so that I don’t accidentally kill you if you get in my way.”

Something stirred in Aloy’s chest that she couldn’t name. Terror was part of it: her heart was still pounding and her skin had gone cold. A strange satisfaction was also present, though. The energy that Aloy had been sure she felt roiling off Kratos like steam off a hot pot had finally come to the surface. Relief and almost wonder swirled around in her as well: she had of course assumed that Kratos could have killed her days ago if he had wanted to, and this proved that she hadn’t been wrong. But she thought back to the strained conversation with Boudica, then their flight through the night from the Roman encampment. 

_ Confidence is quiet _ , she had told Bast.  _ Power is measured _ , she might have added.  _ Both of them together... _ She couldn’t finish the thought without a wet heat rising in her cheeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all are great. Thanks a million for reading.
> 
> ETA: also, 69 kudos. 
> 
> ... 
> 
> Nice.


	15. The Rescue

Atreus spent the first hour of their walk chattering nervously to whomever would listen. After those willing to be his audience dwindled in number, and he caught a disapproving look from his father, he spent the next hour pouring his energy into being quiet, listening, and pretending that this was not the most exciting thing that had happened to him in a long time. Yes, there was battle involved, so there would be fighting and blood and pain and killing, so Atreus felt a little guilty for the spring in his stride and the smile he was trying furiously to keep off of his face. But he seemed incapable of dulling the frenzy of adventure zapping through him every time he thought about where he was going and why and with whom.

It hadn’t been like this since they climbed the mountain. Atreus was convinced that standing with his father, holding his mother’s ashes, overlooking Jotunheim would forever be his single best moment. Ever since that day, he had been in pursuit of other such singular moments, and he couldn’t help but feel like he was coming up on one now.

The resonating energy in his blood having dulled to a low buzz, Atreus watched the other soldiers to figure out how to occupy himself on what promised to be a frustratingly long walk. Most of the Iceni seemed to come from the Kratos School of Travel: they hiked stoically along, only making off-hand comments when forced by some more boisterous walking partner. Those who had seen Kratos’ grand display the day before would periodically look around until they found his hulking figure, and then they would change direction or speed to angle themselves farther away from him. Atreus had by now gotten over his embarrassment at his father’s behavior, but Alis’ voice still whispered in the back of his mind,  _ I know _ . 

Not for the first time, Atreus wished they’d brought Mimir with them.

He’d tried at first to get Aloy’s attention, to pull her into conversation. But there was something odd in Aloy’s eyes that Atreus couldn’t recognize; she seemed distracted, like her mind was somewhere else entirely. He’d told her one of Mimir’s stories about Sindri in Alfheim and she’d seemed to barely register that he was speaking to her. The way she’d talked about Betrys, Atreus had assumed she was anxious or concerned, overcome with strategizing how to free the prisoners. But then Kratos had suddenly appeared beside them and she’d snapped out of her dissociation like she’d been struck, and the ensuing conversation hadn’t had anything to do with the upcoming battle.

Every time Aloy and Kratos spoke to each other, Atreus was reminded of the childlike look of contrition Kratos had given him after he’d confronted him about the stag. Something in Kratos’ face today mirrored that sadness, almost like regret, and Atreus remembered his own confusion at his father’s change of behavior. There had been something there, almost tangible, that Atreus had tried at the time to identify, but it had first slipped away and then slipped his mind as they’d met Boudica and encountered all the strangeness at the hillfort. It seemed to be coming back now, marching in time with this strange behavior of Aloy’s, and it all made Atreus a bit nervous, though he couldn’t say why.

It was a graying dark by the time the group arrived at the steep rock face that Kratos had given as a marker for when to stop and form ranks. It wasn’t too high, all things considered, but Atreus had decided he would climb on his own this time, in front of the Iceni, and the height worried him.

“The advance guard will follow me up this way,” Aloy said in a low voice, turning her back to the cliff. Before they had left the hillfort, she had changed out of her Iceni clothes and into what must have been the outfit she brought from her time. It was finely treated leather, cleverly and intricately stitched with more piping and decorative bits than Atreus thought necessary. Her undershirt looked to be just a series of brightly colored silks wrapped tightly around her and fastened somewhere invisible, hidden beneath armor as hard as stone, but far less brittle. Atreus tried not to stare at the strangeness of it, and was, by now, almost succeeding. “We can approach the town from the rear; the prisoners are held in a hut away from the center, so we should be able to get to them without detection.”

“The rest will come with me up to the gate,” Boudica said, her heavy baritone voice resonating with the rocks at their feet. She too was bedecked in unfamiliar gear, but it altogether seemed more practical. It was more or less the same quality as the clothes Atreus had seen her wearing, but the weave was tighter, the colors duller, and her wild hair was tied almost entirely back at her neck. “We’ll await a signal from the infiltrators, and then we will strike.”

Soldiers divided themselves into their groups; most of them fell in line behind Boudica and began a silent march around the cliff towards what must have been a more gradual embankment. Aloy turned and reached her hand up to a jut that protruded just an inch or so out from the face of the rock, pulling herself up and beginning a steady and surprisingly quick ascent.

Kratos didn’t wait, as he normally did, to give Atreus time to climb onto his back before launching himself after her. Today, it didn’t matter, and Atreus decided to take it as a good sign--that his father believed Atreus could do this alone--but it surprised him as much as everything else about his father recently did.

By the time Atreus was able to pull himself over onto flat ground again, his triceps were burning and his fingers had cramped. Around him, the three Iceni that had come with them were stretching their shoulders and catching their breath, but of course Kratos stood tall and unconcerned as a statue at the front of the group. Aloy stood next to him, and Atreus was surprised to see that she, too, looked like the climb had been almost nothing for her. Atreus walked up to them just in time to hear Kratos say, “...such a group in the same way as before?”

Aloy was looking past him at the trees and beyond, her eyes flitting back and forth as if she was reading something written in the air. “It’s not any more heavily guarded than it was. We shouldn't have a problem getting in,” she glanced back at the Iceni, “I just wish they had picked smaller weapons to bring with them.”

“ _ Bana-phrionnsa _ is a flurry of death with the lance,” one of the women said, her breath still coming in deep huffs. “If we are to win this battle, we cannot bind our own hands behind us.”

“Just don’t drop it,” Aloy said with a sigh. “We’ll be worse than bound if you bring all the guards down on us before we even get in there.”

Like with the town they’d left a few days ago, there was a low wall around the perimeter that was made of stones stacked on top of one another. Aloy led the approach in a tight, low crouch that seemed as if she was gliding across the ground. Even in her strange bright clothes, she seemed to disappear into the grasses as she brought herself low, and where Atreus expected to hear twigs and leaves crunching under her feet, there was nothing but the breeze.

As she came to the wall, she brought her fingers to the side of her head and tapped her temple gently before again scanning something Atreus couldn’t see. She turned partially back to face the group behind her and pointed ahead, toward a space on either side of the closest hut.

“Two guards,” she mouthed. Then she put her finger to her lips and turned back. She executed a tight roll over the low wall, righting herself at the base of the roof a few yards away. The Iceni followed her, and she pointed them up the roof, towards the smoke hole at the top. They climbed gingerly up and disappeared one at a time.

Atreus made to follow them, but as he padded softly onto the roof, he turned to see his father crouching near Aloy, mild concern on his face. 

_ He’s probably too heavy _ , Atreus thought. He looked back up at the roof where the others had disappeared, and then felt something tap his toes through his shoe.

“We stay,” Aloy said through a mixture of mouthed words and gestures. “Take out the guards,” she pointed again to the aisles on either side of the hut. 

Atreus looked at Kratos. He was crouched so low his knuckles dragged on the ground. He leaned out to peer around the hut to see the guards Aloy had spoken of, and Atreus saw his eyes flit back and forth, taking in the situation and calculating strategy. 

Aloy was already sneaking around the base of the hut ahead of them. Atreus followed as quietly as he could manage, realizing as he went just how rarely he and Kratos relied on stealth. As they rounded the bend and the guards’ backs came into full view, Aloy held up a hand to stop them, and turned, bringing her face close to Atreus’ ear.

“Can you shoot one of them in the neck from here?”

Atreus looked more closely at the guard and his armor. There was a barely visible slit between the bottom of the helmet and the top of his chainmail chest piece where an arrow might just slide through.

“Probably,” Atreus said, his brain working furiously to measure the odds.

Aloy narrowed her eyes at him seriously. “I need more than probably.” She looked at him for a long moment as she considered something. “Can you use your knife to slit his throat.”

Atreus felt a lump grow in his throat. He’d killed lots of times. At range was always straightforward and simple enough. But watching death up close was something he tried to avoid, generally. Animals were, of course, the easiest; next were men who were trying to kill him. He’d once even killed a god, though he didn’t like to think about that. But to sneak up unseen and slit a man’s throat before he had a chance to defend himself felt wrong. It was cheating.

In the moment he hesitated, Kratos stepped forward. “I will do it,” he said in a low growl that sounded like wind rattling stones. He looked at Atreus with an expression that was somewhere between disappointment and understanding, and Atreus felt heat rise in his cheeks.

Aloy nodded and crept forward again, Kratos following closely behind. As they neared the guards, Atreus thought he saw the men respond as if they’d heard the approach, but before they could turn or lift their weapons, Kratos had leapt up, wrapped his great hand around the face of one of the men, and brought him down to the ground with a muffled  _ snap _ . Meanwhile, Aloy had deftly reached her spear around the other’s throat, cutting off his ability to scream before pulling him down, pushing her knee into his upper back, and stabbing him coldly through the ribs. The silence they left behind was terrible.

Aloy motioned for them to go back around the hut the other way, and in much the same manner, they took down the guards on the other side. Though this was not the first time Atreus had watched his father end a life in this way, it still struck him as wrong. It turned his stomach to look at the blank faces of the dead men, their breath stopped in their lungs by a force they weren’t given a chance to face.

They were near the doorway to the hut now. A long, thick cloth hung over the opening and deadened the sound within. Aloy pushed it away and stood aside for the Iceni. The rest of the guard had joined with five new faces, bruised and hardened and leaning heavily on their spears. One woman in the group, her deep red hair a wavy, tangled mess matted at the back of her head, held herself tall but walked with a limp that was painful just to look at. She did not meet Atreus’ eyes as she came out of the hut, but Atreus saw her find Aloy and give her a small affirmative nod. 

“We are ready,” she said. Her voice was a familiar baritone, though it scratched for lack of use. “ _ Buannaich am blàr no bàsaich _ .” It started as a gutteral whisper coming from the princess’ throat, and it was quickly taken up by the others around her. It grew in ferocity and force until Atreus was certain the Romans had heard them; clang of metal and sounds of movement came from the direction of the town center.

“ _ Buannaich am blàr no bàsaich. _ ” The wind took up the chant; Atreus could hear the words floating over his head, coming from somewhere beyond the walls.

“Nothing is safe from Roman pride and arrogance,” the princess was saying, readying her spear as the sounds of impending battle drew nearer. 

“ _ Buannaich am blàr no bàsaich. _ ” The air rang with the words, as though the crickets and night birds were chanting as well. 

“They deface the sacred,” The princess continued.

“ _ Buannaich am blàr no bàsaich. _ ” Atreus’ heart seemed to align its beats with the rhythm of the words. 

"The women of the Iceni will answer with vengeance,” the princess hissed as she pulled into a crouch.

All around them, the Iceni shook their weapons, beat their chests, and stamped their feet like anxious stags. The rocks on the ground shook with the chant. Liquid fire was rising in Atreus’ throat; it was like the Spartan in him was being drawn to the surface.

The first Roman came around the bend, followed closely by his brothers in arms. Their weapons were superior, they were standing taller, and their armor looked nearly impenetrable, but Atreus saw in their eyes a fear he hadn’t known possible in a soldier.

“ _ Airson na banrigh! _ ” The princess’ shout was strong and impressively loud. The rest of the Iceni answered it with barks and screams that sounded as much like calls from animals as sounds of humans. They all charged forward, propelled with a speed and strength Atreus wouldn’t have believed if he hadn’t seen it.

The first line of Romans fell upon the spears, caught completely unprepared. Atreus sprinted forward and, using the backs of the Iceni warriors in front of him, leapt high into the air and brought his bow to bare against the back lines. Behind him, he heard his father’s yell. One, two, three, four shots Atreus fired off in rapid succession, each hitting a different target and sending him to his knees, just in time for Kratos to plow through the front line and level the small crowd with the axe. Two heads rolled, cleanly separated from their necks. Two others were not so lucky, and were instead cleft in two, their pained screams ending in gurgles as their bodies came to rest in their fate.

Atreus found himself atop a roof of another hut, farther into the fray. From the far side of the town, he could see the rest of the Iceni, led by Boudica whose painted face was contorted in an angry snarl. As planned, the Romans were not prepared for a two-pronged approach, but they were regrouping more quickly than Atreus had thought they would. He fired his arrows into their ranks and darted away, staying on top of the roofs but not remaining in one place for long.

As he ran along the battle lines, he saw his father beneath him, cutting down the Romans with the axe as though he were harvesting grain with a scythe. Aloy followed behind him, using his broad body as a plow through the crowd and usiner her bow to pick off anyone the axe didn’t immediately kill. The Iceni charged behind them, spreading out into the crowd like ink dropped in water.

In the back of the Roman lines, archers were rallying. Atreus could see that they were about to unleash a storm of arrows into the group of freed prisoners. The princess and the others had no shields or armor to speak of; Atreus was sure such an attack could kill many of the people they’d come to rescue.

“ _ Kráku lið! _ ” he shouted, and shocking bolts shaped like crows crackled out of the air and into the group of Romans at the back. Some pierced armor, felling the soldiers like toppled stones. Others ricocheted off helmets and chest plates, sending other soldiers spinning in dizziness and confusion. Two men raised their bows, aiming to shoot the birds from the air, and two others raised their hands as if they could bat them down like flies. In their chaos, Atreus shot four more arrows into their ranks landing killing or near-killing blows each time. 

“Archers,” he called out to Kratos, as some men were still knocking arrows. 

“I see them,” Kratos yelled back, and pushed his way through the crowd like a sharp needle through hide. He hobbled the remaining archers with one swing of the axe, and ended them completely with the next. Behind him, Aloy was piercing soldiers with two and three arrows at a time at close range. She crouched and rolled around, cleanly avoiding blades as they struck down at her from above. Death spread out from the two of them like petals unfurling. Atreus fired arrows into any soldiers outside their devastating range.

The Iceni were still at the edges of the fighting, kept at bay by the tight layout of the huts and the wall-like defense of the Romans. Only Kratos had pushed through to the inside, and the Romans' superior numbers and armor were playing in their favor.

“Father,” Atreus called, his voice scratching in his throat, “there are too many of them.” As he spoke, he buried two more arrows in nearby soldiers. 

Kratos made quick work of one of the men in front of him, rending his legs from his torso. “Cut them down,” he shouted back. “We have the upper hand.” 

“The Iceni can’t hold out this long,” Atreus shouted even as he followed Kratos’ instructions. He remembered his father’s hesitance at their sparring at the hillfort, and the nearly frightened look in his eyes when Atreus had told him about Alis. “Father, please!”

Taking his eyes off the crowd of Romans below him, Atreus found Kratos’ face. It was spattered with blood and gore and his eyes were flames in his head. Atreus knew he was holding back, and that Boudica and her people would pay for it. His expression was stony and resistant. 

“Focus,” he shouted at Atreus.

Atreus yelled wordlessly and fired four more shots like quick punches. All of them went into the body of one man who collapsed gradually, as though he was kneeling in prayer. Aloy had slid into a tight corner behind the crowd and was sending arrow after arrow into the men poised to fall to Kratos’ axe, lining them up for their deaths. Her brow was shining and deeply creased and Atreus could see her breaths heaving in her chest. If she was tiring, then the Iceni had to be as well. And if their offense broke so soon, they would be forced to regroup and take even heavier losses. 

With another shout of fury, Atreus leapt over the heads of the Romans and landed heavily on their backs. As he came down, he drove two arrows, one in each hand, down through the backs of the necks of the men he could reach. Around him, other soldiers seemed stunned at first, but rallied quickly and rounded on him, swords drawn.

“Atreus!” he heard Kratos yell as he struck out with his knife and rolled between falling blades. Atreus was quicker than they were, but his strikes were not fatal. He heard pained wails as he darted through, slicing hamstrings as he went, but he was not so small anymore as to completely avoid injury. He hissed as cuts bloomed on his arms. 

Out of the chaos of the crowd, an arm struck his wrist and pulled it around. Atreus wriggled free, but not before another hand trapped his other side. Two or three men were working together to pin him to the ground.

“Atreus!” Kratos’ voice was louder and closer, and as his animalistic roar shook the ground around him, Atreus felt the wave of blistering heat that meant the God of War had entered the battle.


	16. Rage

“Atreus!” 

The shout was gravelly and full in a way that Aloy hadn’t heard before. It pulled her attention away from the soldiers she had been shooting; she turned her head just long enough to see Kratos toss a man bodily aside, as easily as if his lifeless body was a doll, and push off into a run, batting oncoming enemies away like gnats.

Aloy saw ahead of him where Atreus was becoming hopelessly entangled with a group of swordsmen. He was tucking his body and rolling in and out, but he was not quick enough to avoid them all at the same time. Aloy turned her bow away from the soldiers nearest her and tried to draw the men off of Atreus, peppering them with her lightest and fastest arrows. It worked a bit, but he was still being pulled in, and Kratos began to run faster.

“Atreus!” he shouted, louder than a Fireclaw. Aloy saw the pebbles at her feet rattle with the force of the sound, and then the fire erupted.

It was like the moment with the tree trunk: fire poured like a liquid out from Kratos and spilled over the crowd immediately surrounding him, flinging them backwards like they’d been thrown. But this was more, too, than before. His body seemed to swell and the fire swirled around him in a flurry. With every step forward he punched, and with every punch, a Roman fell dead, his spine broken or his face unrecognizable. All of the fighting that was happening elsewhere in the group seemed to hang frozen in the air as everyone turned to see this punishing force pass like a warm knife through butter. 

Three, five, ten men fell, and the rest began to cower back as Kratos approached the group that held Atreus. Before he reached them, they dropped the boy and turned to run, but Kratos lunged and grabbed two of them around their waists. He leapt ten or more feet into the air and brought them both down beneath him, cracking the ground and sending their viscera flying out onto their brethren. Their bodies broken, he dropped them, stretched his arms out and roared again as Atreus scrambled back up to stand and began shooting at the men’s backs as they fled. Even those nearer the gate where the Iceni were turned and, calling out to one another, ran as fast as they could out of the village. 

It took a moment, but the Iceni came back to themselves, having gotten lost in the spectacle of Kratos’ rage. They turned as well and, continuing their guttural war cry from earlier, chased the Romans, running down the nearest ones with their spears and swords.

Though her allies had scattered and the town was strewn with broken bodies from both sides, Aloy recognized the beginning of the end, the unraveling of the tension of a battle. Around the central clearing Iceni raised their weapons in triumph, shouting and whistling and pumping their fists. Scanning the crowd, Aloy saw Boudica and Alis approach Betrys, who was herself standing over the body of a man she had pinned to the ground with her spear. The women embraced, and Aloy could see that Betrys was shaking with heavy sobs.

In the middle of it all was Kratos, chest heaving, the fire having left him. Atreus walked around, kicking at Romans’ bodies, looking for loot or maybe checking for signs of life. But Kratos stood immobile as a tree.

Aloy’s legs were shaking from the time she’d spent tightly crouched, and her arms stung from the rapid fire of her bow. Her shoulders rose and fell steadily and heavily and sweat dripped down her face, only narrowly missing her eyes. But the only sensation she was aware of was a burning in her stomach and a tingling that had become all too familiar by now. Her toes curled in her sandals and her jaw clenched, and as the fury of the fight left her muscles, another intense excitement replaced it. She bit her lip to keep it at bay, and began to help clear away the mess of the battle.

The Roman dead were not even removed from the central square of the town before the Iceni had built a huge bonfire and cracked open a barrel of some sharp smelling alcohol; it was unclear whether it had come from the Iceni or the Romans. Some of the Iceni, including Boudica, went and found musical instruments from somewhere in town and a beat grew from nothing. Someone pressed a heavy mug into Aloy’s hands and she took three swigs before the sting in her throat was too much. Someone else pulled her into a circle that had sprung up around the fire, tossing her from one side to another as she worked hard just to stay standing.

All the while, she looked around for broad shoulders and a red tattoo. She caught glimpses of them here and there, but they always disappeared before she could make her way toward them, and the excitement in her belly grew unbearable.  Three times she caught the amber eyes staring at her from across the fire, and three times they evaded her.

_ I’m a good tracker _ , she said to herself, stepping forcefully out of the circle. Somewhere along the way she had taken off her Carja sandals and leggings, and as she stood carefully still to get her bearings, she wriggled her toes in the soft dirt, grounding herself. She turned slowly, taking in the lay of the crowd until she found what she was looking for.

_ Enough of this _ , she thought.  _ You’re mine _ .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damn, this was a doozy. Thanks for the patience; I hope you think it was worth the wait! The next couple of chapters will arrive more promptly, I promise =D


	17. The Fires

The Iceni were not so different from Midgardians in their celebrations, Kratos noticed. They were too loose and jubilant for Spartan tastes with how much they drank and danced, and their music was painful to hear. Of course, Atreus was not Spartan, so he danced and drank with everyone as they created chaos around the large bonfire they’d built in the center of town. Kratos leaned against a fence post, far from the center of attention, and watched as his son made a fool out of himself. He tried to maintain his stoic distrust of merriment, but he could not help the small smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth. Atreus had not been this free with himself in years, not since the Aesir had begun to hunt them, not since Faye had died. The Iceni were celebrating their liberation, but Atreus might as well have been celebrating his own.

Kratos’ eyes wandered around the fire. From the looks of the crowd, most of the warparty had come to take part. Boudica held a drum in one hand and a small two-headed mallet in the other, artfully rolling one across the other in time with the music. Betrys clapped and stamped her feet and watched as her younger sister hiked her skirts nearly to her waist and twisted and turned around the fire, weaving herself in and out of a line of other Iceni. They were all laughing, their faces red; warmed from both inside and out.

A heavy stone dropped into Kratos’ stomach when he noticed the free-flying red hair, foreign leathers, and tight scarves tossing themselves around in the midst of the crowd. Aloy’s eyes were bright, her smile was wide, and her boots were nowhere to be seen as she floated and flung herself around, jauntily making an impressive attempt to imitate the dancers around her. Her cheeks were ruddy, too, and Kratos could see a small trickle of sweat at the nape of her neck. His own face burned as he turned quickly away, coming to stare down at the base of a nearby hut.

_ Enough of this _ , he thought miserably. 

In spite of himself, his mind drew him back to just hours ago, her arrows flying past his ears through the air, slicing men open as they went. He’d thrown his ax and called it back, and she’d used the opening he created to down two archers and a spearman with three arrows fired simultaneously. He’d charged headlong into the oncoming line and emerged with not even a scratch, three men dead by his hand and three other bodies surrounding him on the ground, arrows rising like flags of surrender from their necks and torsos. He’d turned to find her meeting his gaze for a mere moment, long enough for the nearly imperceptible smile to flash across her face, before she’d plunged herself back into the fray, switching from spear to bow and back with no hesitation.

_ You are a fool _ , he thought to himself.

She had smiled at him, though. He couldn’t be sure, but he felt sure anyway, and he hated himself for it. 

_ Let it go _ , he thought.

“Kratos?” 

His neck twinged painfully as he snapped to attention. She was standing in front of him, her arm outstretched, almost touching his. Her eyes reflected the light of the fire.

“Aloy,” he said stupidly. 

She smiled, and rested her hand on his forearm. “Did I interrupt some daydream?” she asked.

“No,” he said, his skin painfully aware of where she touched him. “I was just…” his voice faded as he tried to think of anything coherant to say.

“Oh, I see, you were just strategizing how we will storm Camulodunum, whatever that is. You were calculating our infantry’s strength against the Romans stationed there.” Her voice sounded serious, but her face was bright with laughter. “Kratos of Sparta doesn’t know how to take a night off.”

Kratos didn’t know what to say, so he just continued to stare uselessly into her eyes. Even with the fire flickering there, they seemed to sparkle and dance with some other light of their own, and that light took any words out of Kratos’ mouth.

She leaned closer to him, her grip on his arm tightening slightly, so that the warmth of her hand went deeper than his skin. “I don’t suppose you’ll dance with me?”

Kratos blinked. “I…I would not know how.”

Aloy’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “What? You mean they didn’t have dance instructors in Sparta?”

He smiled slightly in spite of himself, and glanced down at the ground to hide it.

“Or was what we did back there with our weapons not what you’d call ‘dancing’?”

He looked up in time to see something bright in her eye. He was captivated by her, his eyes locked on her, and it took all his strength to keep his thoughts from showing there. He felt balanced on a sword’s blade; one wrong move and she would drop him in disgust, or worse, fear. But then her hand slid down his arm and her fingers laced themselves between his, and she pulled him away from the fence post and towards the fire. 

Boudica’s drum pounded in Kratos’ ears like an underwater heartbeat, and he was suddenly aware of how much bigger he was than everyone else in the circle of light. Aloy pulled him faster, forcing him to trot clumsily to keep up with her, until they slotted into a space between two other dancers in the ring. She raised his hand above her head and looked over at him, and then laughed enormously at what must have been a look of near-terror on his face. 

“Just clap,” she said through her laughter, “and follow the person next to you. That’s all I’ve been doing.”

Kratos swallowed thickly and looked around him. Most people were caught up in their own movements, paying no attention to anyone else, even while they swayed with one rhythm as a group. Some looked so drunk now that Kratos was sure they’d tumble into the fire in a moment. “Where is Atreus?” he asked

Aloy glanced around. “I don’t see him,” she said. “Why?”

“Do not tell him,” Kratos said, nearly shouting to be heard as they passed the musicians, “if I fall.”

She laughed again. “I promise.” And, still loosely holding his hand, she spun in a small circle, her hair and skirt fanning out away from her like petals from a flower. 

Kratos’ face burned again, and he forced himself to look away into the fire, into the face of a stranger, anywhere but at her.

But then she came in front of him and took his other hand in hers. “Don’t do that,” she said. She looked up at him with something like defiance on her face. “Look.” She leaned in close to him, somehow managing to keep them moving together with the rest of the group, even though Kratos was certain his muscles had ceased to function. She brought herself close to his chest so that all he could see was her face looking up at him. “I want you to look.” 

She pushed out from him, raising her hands above her head and swaying her hips like a ship in a storm. Kratos felt his face grow hot, felt his feet falter as he continued to try to step in time with her, but he kept his eyes on her and felt a surge of irrepressible energy. She stared into his face and he was lost in her, fairly certain that he looked like he’d just been clubbed over the head. She reached out and took his hands in hers again, and they made their own small circles within the ring of dancers traveling around the bonfire. She pulled their arms down to their sides, drawing their bodies within inches of each other; her chin was nearly against his chest as she looked up at him, craning his neck down to look into her eyes. Somehow their feet kept moving and Kratos stayed upright, but he knew if he thought too hard, about anything, that would all come to a crashing halt. So instead, he tried to feel his way around the group with Aloy, their two-person circle growing and shrinking as she pulled them together and pushed them apart. Whenever she got close enough for him to feel the heat of her body on his bare chest, he felt the crack in his resolve widen painfully. He knew it was only a matter of time before she shattered him on the stone of her shining eyes.

Then, suddenly, the drums stopped. Around them, voices erupted in loud cheers and whoops, and the ring of dancers slowed to a gradual and stumbling halt. Everyone turned to look at Boudica, who had climbed up onto a tree stump on the edge of the fire ring. Aloy, whose back had been towards the bonfire, turned to face the Iceni queen and leaned her back slowly and deliberately into Kratos. She still held his hands, and in her turning she had wrapped his arms around her. Kratos could feel himself trembling and willed his nerves to still.

“Sisters,” Boudica called out in her booming tenor, “Brothers, hear me! This time of feasting and celebrating is only just beginning, and it will continue long into the night.” A thunderous cheer rolled through the crowd. “But before our spirits are swept away by drinks and other pleasures, let us not forget to thank the goddess who brought us champions, saved our warriors, and got our daughters safely home!”

Another cheer rose up from the crowd. “Andraste!” they chanted. “Victory Indestructible! The Iceni Unconquered!” They raised their flagons into the air, spilling the contents over one another in clumsy showers, which made the laughter even louder.

Kratos looked down to see Aloy sliding around him, pulling him along by his hand. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

The chanting didn’t stop, and Boudica continued to speak loudly over it, but Kratos could not hear what she said. The blood was pounding in his ears as if the drums had never stopped. “I’d rather not stay for their superstitious rituals,” Aloy said in a low voice. She led him through the narrow alleys between the huts, around fences with sheep and pigs, and into the wild field beyond the town.

“Where are we going?” Kratos asked in what he could muster as a whisper. The sound of the crowd was dying behind them, and the darkness of the surrounding area threatened to engulf them completely as the full moon went behind a thick cloud.

“Away,” Aloy said simply. She peered over her shoulder at him with the defiant look in her eyes again. “Do you want to go back?” Kratos opened his mouth, but couldn’t summon words to speak. Aloy laughed. “I didn’t think so.”

They walked until the light from the fire was a suggestion over the hill, until all around them was empty and dark and cool. Then Aloy stopped suddenly and turned to face Kratos.

At first she said nothing. They just looked in each other’s eyes as they had a hundred times already. Kratos strained himself at first to keep his from wandering, but after a moment, her face was a magnet, and the moonlight reflecting in her eyes kept his locked.

She dropped his hand and slowly ran hers up the sides of his torso, tracing the swells and dips of his muscles with her fingers. “What were you going to do, standing there for hours against that fence?” Her eyes followed her hand as it worked its way up towards his collar bone.

Kratos’ breath caught in his throat.  _ Watch you _ , he thought.  _ Watch you and ache _ .

Her hands came to his shoulders and she slowly entangled her fingers behind his neck. “Would you have left me by that fire alone all night?”

Kratos looked down at her, his arms hanging uselessly at his sides. “You have been drinking,” he said before he knew it.

She looked shocked, briefly. “No,” she said defensively. “Well, a little maybe. What does that have to do with anything?”

Kratos closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. “You would not be speaking to me this way if not for that,” he said dully.

Her hands dropped from his neck, and his stomach dropped into his feet.

“That’s not true,” she said softly. “But if you don’t want me here, then I’ll go.” She brushed gently past him and he caught the herbal and earthy scent of her hair as she went. He stood still, not daring even to breathe, while he heard her footsteps recede behind him. Then he sighed and, without realizing it, he fell quietly to his knees, his shoulders slumping in on themselves.

“That’s it?” Her voice was yards away, but he jumped as if she’d whispered suddenly into his ear. “That’s all?”

He turned his head to look at her, still kneeling stupidly on the ground. “What?”

“Are you going to just let me go?” 

Kratos didn’t know what to say. His mouth hung open slightly as he searched for any fitting words.

“What do I need to do to make you stop holding back?” she said, her voice breaking slightly. “Why do you keep pulling away from me?”

Kratos leaned back on his heels and hung his head. “It is not right,” he said, nearly inaudibly.

“What?” she asked, stepping closer. “I can’t hear you.”

“It is not right,” Kratos said more loudly and more forcefully. “This thing you think you want. It is not right.”

He couldn’t meet her eyes, couldn’t see the fire there, but he felt it burn against the side of his face. “ _ I _ want?” she said sharply. “What does that mean, Kratos?”

“I could be your father,” Kratos said. “I could be your father’s father,” he added. “You should find a younger man--”

“A dumber man, you mean,” Aloy said with a mirthless laugh. “What’s the purpose of their youth, Kratos?” She stepped closer to him and he felt her rest a hand on his shoulder. “You are stronger than any of those  _ young _ men,” she said, giving his shoulder a small squeeze. “You are braver than any of those  _ young  _ men.” She walked slowly around him, letting her hand slide around his neck to his cheek. He knew that if he wanted her to leave, he needed to push her away now, but her warmth was irresistible. “I can--and have--run circles around those  _ young  _ men. They will never understand who I am or where I come from." She had walked all the way around so that they were facing each other, and she now knelt in front of him so that their eyes were level. “Mostly, though,” she said, and her breath hitched in her chest, “I don’t want them.”

Kratos said nothing. Once again, her eyes drew his to them and all he could do was stare, his heart pounding in his chest.

“What do  _ you  _ want, Kratos?”

He couldn’t speak.

“Do you want me to stay?” her voice had dropped to a whisper that sounded involuntarily small and vulnerable. She was honestly asking. “Or do you want me to leave?”

His tongue was uselessly stuck and dry in his mouth. He parted his lips and took a breath, but could still say nothing.

“If you want me to, if you tell me to, I will leave,” she said, blinking slowly. “I’ll go back to town, you’ll go find a place to sleep this off, and we’ll both go back to whatever it was we were before. You’ll stare at me when you think I don’t know and I’ll pretend never to notice. It will hurt, but if it’s what you want, I’ll find a way to make it work.”

He took slow, shallow breaths.

“But you have to tell me,” she said, sitting up on her knees so that she was looking slightly down into his face. “Do you want me to leave, Kratos?”

_ You are a fool _ , he thought to himself. 

“No,” he said aloud.

There was a pause as his word passed through the air between them and flavored it with meaning. A smile spread across her face like ripples on the surface of a pond. She leaned closer to him, impossibly close, so close he could feel the warmth of the breath as it passed between her lips. 

“Good,” she said.

And then she was bearing down on him, mouth gently pressing against his. She brought her arms around his neck and pulled herself towards him until she was straddling him, sitting on his thighs. Now unbound by any logic or self-control Kratos may have once possessed, his hands sought out her back; one palm pressed into the tight crevasse between her shoulder blades, and the other found the flat, muscular place at the base of her spine where her skin was bared by the tight lacing of her strange foreign scarves. She was exactly the right height, fitting perfectly in front of him, cradling his face between her hands and kissing him softly but firmly. His eyes floated closed as heat and pleasure spread like poison through his veins, and he felt all his muscles relax as she sunk herself deeply on top of him.

It had been so long, so many years since he’d been this close to anyone, but his body moved and responded to her as if it were doing what came naturally. His mind went blissfully blank as he felt her tongue exploring his mouth, licking gently wherever she could reach. He guided her hips to his own as he pulled her firmly onto him. 

She gave a slight gasp, and her kiss became suddenly more ravenous. She was small in his arms, but strong. He felt her lean muscles shift beneath his fingers as she followed his lead and simultaneously pressured him to follow hers. His thighs began to burn as the force of her against his chest pushed him backwards, flattening him towards the ground. He shouldn't let her do this--his brain was screaming at him to make her stop before it all came crashing down--but she'd  _ smiled  _ at him just hours ago, and she  _ wanted  _ him now, and as much as he couldn't believe her, he wanted to, and in this moment that was enough. 

Predictably, the silks wrapped tightly around her did not come loose easily, but when they did finally cascade into a soft pool at Aloy’s feet, Kratos could not help the moment’s pause he took to drink her in. She didn’t look at him as she pulled at the knots at her waist and slipped her petaled skirt down and slid out to kneel on the grass next to him, completely bare. When she finally looked back at him, her eyes were soft, almost coy with vulnerability. 

Kratos had never been a man of many words, but his speechlessness in that moment felt like something entirely different than Spartan minimalism. Her expression was questioning, her cheeks were pink, her eyes were searching; he needed to say something.

“You…” he began, but stopped short.  _ Are beautiful _ , he considered, but it felt insufficient.  _ Are more than I had imagined _ , would also be true, but was more than he wanted to admit. The longer his silence persisted, the higher Aloy’s eyebrows climbed on her forehead, her face weakening with worry. “You are a dream,” he said finally, though it, too, didn’t truly say enough. Her face relaxed, and she leaned forward, closing the gap between them. 

As their lips met again, Kratos felt fire licking his fingers and ears, and a deep roar built in his chest. Aloy seemed almost to purr in answer, and deftly began to undo the belts at his waist while pushing him back again onto the grass. Impatient, he lifted her, his fingers almost touching as he wrapped his hands around her hips, and just as she pulled the leather free of his legs, he brought her down against himself. Her body, cooled by the night air, shivered as it met his, firey with an internal energy, and he could feel the slickness between her legs. He brought them both down to the grass, the soft ground cradling his head as fine as any pillow.

Again she brought a hand to the side of his face and kissed him with a ferocity that nearly matched what he felt. Her other arm wrapped down around his neck and he felt her fingernails scrape over his shoulders. He ran his fingers down her side, feeling her taut muscles jump and retract as he slid over sensitive spaces perhaps no man had ever touched before. He could almost hold her in one hand, like an apple, and as his finger merely brushed her moist warmth from behind, she bit his lip, hard, and he felt his mouth resonate with a faint mewl from her throat.

His eyes flew open and he searched her face. Her own eyes were wide and bright with a hunger he wasn’t prepared for. She pulled gently away from him, one hand still at his cheek, her fingers tangled in his beard.

For a moment neither of them moved, and the only sound was their labored breaths. The question in his face was answered by reluctant compromise in her own, before she whispered, “Maybe we should just go a little slower.”

He gave a small nod and slid his hand back to the supple meat of her thigh, holding her leg both against and around him. Her wetness still rocked against his erection, and the fire in his chest threatened to consume them both, and as Aloy returned her mouth to his, he was almost thankful for her hesitance.

Almost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... <3...
> 
> I may or may not have written this, like, months ago.
> 
>  
> 
> It's been agony in the meantime.


	18. The Past

At the end, which had come in a sudden mindless rush where Aloy had made hungry,  jerking movements that might have embarrassed her if she had been able to think about it, he was lying on the grass and she was lying on his chest and their tandem heaving breaths sent puffs of warm vapor into the cool night.

Her eyelids were heavy, and one of her arms was trapped between his broad back and the flattened grass. Her legs, relaxed now and lying lazily on either side of his, felt as though they were both humming with latent excitement and numb from sudden exertion. She felt she could lay that way for hours before even considering getting up.

Kratos’ massive chest rose and fell more slowly than hers. She brought her free hand to his shoulder and ran her fingers idly down the red mark there. It was rough, though no rougher than the rest of his skin, not like a true scar. How many minutes had she stared at it absently? She’d been mesmerized by the way it sliced over his shoulder and chest and face, running down to his belt where it normally disappeared behind his weapons and skins.

“This is a tattoo,” she said quietly, not wanting to disturb the comfortable quiet that had settled between them.

“Mm,” he purred, and she felt it in her chest. 

“Does it mean something?” The Carja sometimes tattooed the fine decorative lines near their eyes, and Avad had once tried to explain their significance, but she lost interest whenever he talked about his devotion to the sun, and his words hadn’t stuck in her head.

Kratos did not respond. She pushed herself up so that she could see his face. He was looking up at the sky above them, his eyes flitting back and forth, reading the stars.

“The Nora don’t do tattoos,” she offered. “They paint markings on their faces, arms, and chests, labeling themselves as Seekers and Braves and Mothers of so many generations or whatever, but the marks would rub off and they’d have to redraw them whenever some special occasion came around.”

“It is a memorial,” he said after another long, quiet moment. “To my brother Deimos.”

Aloy said nothing and continued instead to watch him.  _ So, like a scar then _ , she thought. 

He looked down at her. His eyes were a darker color now, almost brown: coals that had cooled in the night air. He didn’t say anything, but the tired fondness in his expression made Aloy smile.

“This…” she said, feeling her face heat up. “This was…” She felt childish, suddenly hyper aware of his full beard and scarred skin, the sum of a life that was unsearchably more than her own. “This was fun,” she finally finished with a small, dissatisfied sigh that didn’t match her words.

He laughed a single “Ha” almost under his breath. Nonetheless, the force rocked her like a skiff tossed at sea, and she barely caught herself before falling into the grass. “What?” she asked through a smile.

“‘Fun’ is not the word I would have used,” he said, propping himself up on his elbow and turning to the side. Her one leg still hung lazily over his and her arm was still around his shoulders.

She laughed. “I’m sure you’ve never used ‘fun’ to describe anything.”

He nodded in concession. “I am glad you enjoyed yourself.”

She reached out her hand and lay her palm flat against the wide muscles on his chest. He was warm, and she could feel his heart beating slow and heavy like a disc launcher winding down. “Can we…” she didn’t meet his eyes, “do it again sometime?”

He was silent. She looked up into his face and saw the same shame and reticence that had been there earlier. She could almost hear the protests he was writing in his mind, but they didn’t come, so she merely watched him.

“Aloy…” His voice was low and might have been a whisper if he were capable of something so small. 

“Kratos,” she answered, the hint of a warning in her tone.

He sighed, blinking slowly. One of his great hands was resting on her hip, and she could feel it cool like a dying fire. “A younger man--”

“I thought I made myself pretty clear about that,” she cut him off. He looked into her eyes, his expression patient but insistent.

“A younger man has made fewer mistakes,” he said. “A younger man’s past does not weigh down his every action, does not taint every thought. A younger man has enough time to make up for past failures.”

Aloy blinked and then frowned. “What are you worried about?”

“There is much you do not know about me.”

“Obviously,” she said, rolling her eyes. “We’ve known each other for a matter of days. I’m from thousands of years in the future. We’re in the middle of nowhere we know fighting enemies that aren’t ours. There’s much I don’t know about a lot.”

“Some secrets are greater than others,” he said. “Some unknowns are more dangerous.”

She tilted her head, curious. “Like what?”

He said nothing, but sighed again. “You would not have to ask a younger man.”

She closed her eyes and took a breath. “Are you going to kill me?” she asked seriously.

He looked mildly startled. “No,” he said.

“Are you planning to make me be someone I’m not?”

He shook his head. “I would not want to, no.”

“Are you keeping these dangerous secrets because you think I’m too weak or ignorant to hear them?” Her eyebrows jerked involuntarily with her last question.

He nearly winced at her words. “That is not the reason,” he said, his tone apologetic.

“Then I’ll ask again: what are you worried about?”

They looked deep into each other’s eyes as though daring each other to blink. After a long moment she saw his nostrils flare and his chest rise as he braced himself.

“You will hate me,” he said. His voice was almost weak, if anything about him could be described that way.

She blinked and raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”

“If I were a braver man, I might tell you,” he continued. “But it is not only my secret to keep.” He looked away. 

She frowned. “Atreus?”

He looked back at her, surprised.

“If I asked him, would he tell me?”

“No,” he said, almost barking. The pitch of his voice made her heart skip. “Though it does not mean for him the same as for me.”

She smirked in spite of herself. “Because he’s a ‘younger man’?” she asked.

Kratos looked back at her without speaking. She almost felt guilty--his thoughts were clearly heavy on him--but she couldn’t bring herself to take his shame seriously.

She removed her hand from his chest and pushed herself into a sitting position, wrapping her arms around her for protection from the chill.

“Kratos,” she said matter-of-factly, “I haven’t been with a man before.” She spat the words out quickly, surprised at the embarrassment she suddenly felt. “Not because I couldn’t, you understand.” She felt like a teacher scolding a student. “I can’t count the number of people who have invited me to their bed in one way or another.” That was almost true; she couldn’t count them, but that was mostly because she wasn’t sure she was aware of all of them. “One man who rules the largest tribe for hundreds of miles sought me out, offering me wealth as well as pleasure.” It had been a particularly awkward dinner, since Erend had been standing guard nearby. “His father had raised the army that killed the only family I’ve ever had, but he asked me anyway.” 

She reached over and pulled the Carja silks towards her, beginning to wrap them over her shoulders and breasts. “You’re right that there’s a lot I don’t know,” she said, more quietly now. “But when I came to you tonight, it wasn’t because I didn’t know any better.” She fastened the last clip under her arm and then looked back at him. “I know that you are confident, because confidence is quiet. And I know that you are powerful because power takes calculated risks.” She crawled towards him, holding back a smile at the haunted expression on his face. “And I know you can only hold those two together and be the man you are because you are wiser, more experienced than any of those younger men who have wanted me before.” 

Her face was close to his now and she could feel her own breath rebounding off his cheek. “You are strong,” she said, momentarily distracted by just how strong he looked, “and you are brave; you are confident, and you are powerful.” She smiled outright and stroked his neck with her finger. “You are beautiful to look at and unbelievable to hold,” she said, her voice faltering slightly. “And of all the men I could ever have been with, I’d choose you again,” she kissed his cheek, just above the line of his beard, “and again,” she kissed his other cheek, “again,” she kissed the tip of his nose, giggling a little, “and again.” She looked at him from behind her eyelashes before leaning in and setting her lips over his, reaching back to cradle his head close to hers. She felt his hand, warming again now, come to her waist and she rested her weight against it.

“If you have secrets that explain how you became the man you are,” she said, pulling only slightly away before kissing him again in a brief flurry, “I hope one day you’ll share them with me.” She kissed him long and hard, her eyes squeezing shut with the force of it.

After a long moment that she almost wished would last forever, she pulled away again and leveled him with her gaze. “Until then, please don’t keep me from you.” She looked back and forth between his eyes, which had lightened again into the fierce amber from before. “And never make my decisions for me.”

She let her words hang between them for a moment. He seemed to give a small, feeble nod. Then she fell slowly but certainly into him, drinking in his scent and taste and rolling them both back over onto the grass.


	19. The Bowl

Atreus sorted through the small pile of coins in his hand with his thumb. They had been stamped with a strange, bulbous face, and had foreign markings around the edge. The language, the picture, the size of the coins were all unfamiliar to Atreus, and even at a time when the buzz of battle was still loud in his brain, the unfamiliar pulled him in like a warm fire.

“Leave them,” a smooth, dark voice came from over his shoulder. He turned to see Alis standing over him, her spear tall and straight as a soldier at attention. “The wealth of the dead is their own.”

Atreus looked back at the coins in his hand. “I’ve never seen these before,” he said. “They don’t look like the silver your people at the northern village used.”

“The Romans put their God-King on their coin,” Alis said with a small shrug, putting out her hand to help him stand. “We do not worship him.”

Atreus held his thumb over one of the coins and let the others fall to the dirt by the body of the Roman he’d been looting. He took Alis’ hand and pulled himself to his feet. But once he was standing, she did not let go. Instead, she turned and lead him away towards the place where the Iceni were about to light an enormous bonfire.

“We have much to thank you for, it seems,” she said. As they walked, her hand still clasped warmly around his, she did not look at him. She looked here and there around them, a princess surveying her people

“Thank me?” Atreus asked. He could feel his face heating up, even in the cold sharpness of the night around him. “You mean for the battle?”

“It is undeniable that we could not have won without you and your father,” she said matter-of-factly.

Atreus frowned. “Maybe not as quickly, but…” Atreus remembered the eerie chant that Betrys had raised from nothing in the early moments of the battle. He stifled a shiver. “I think you would still have had the enemy well in hand.”

Alis stopped walking and turned her head slightly so that her eyes met Atreus’. “We did not lose a single warrior,” she said. Her expression was stony. Atreus noticed that, unlike previously, her form was solid and clear. “We have you and your father to thank for that.”

Atreus blinked in silence for a moment. Alis was still holding his one hand in hers and giving no sign of letting go. “Don’t forget Andraste,” he said lamely.

She did not respond except to turn and continue forward. There was a flurry of activity as the Iceni around them worked to clear some of the battle debris and bring barrels and cauldrons and tall bowls and began to scoop cups and cups of sharp smelling drinks. 

“Does this mean I’m not a prisoner anymore?” Atreus asked, feeling a small smirk sneak onto his face.

Alis gave him a short glance out of the side of her eye before saying, “Only the queen could know that.” They reached a great cauldron full of a dark liquid with tall bowls set hastily around its base. She set her spear against the edge of the cauldron and reached down to pick up one of the bowls, then dipped it beneath the surface of the liquid. It dripped with what smelled like weak vinegar and looked like thin blood. She caught Atreus’ eyes as she raised it to her lips and took a long sip, holding his gaze with what he could only call a challenge.

Then she handed him the bowl.

He’d had alcohol before, obviously, but he had never smelled anything like this. He was used to a warm, liquid bread that settled heavily in the stomach and let you take off your coat. This drink was only as warm as his skin and made his nose wrinkle with the strange smell.

Over the lip of the bowl, he saw Alis watching him, the corners of her mouth tipped up with a subtle smugness that lit a fire behind his ribs. In one movement, he practically threw the drink down his throat. It burned the soft flesh at the back of his mouth, and he couldn’t help but purse his lips and do his best to keep his eyes open.

Alis was still holding his free hand in her own, and the curl of her lips had developed into a full smirk. “ _ Thig am blàr gu crìch. _ ” She took the bowl back from Atreus and dipped it back into the cauldron. “ _ Tha an cogadh a 'tòiseachadh. _ ” She took another long sip and handed it to Atreus.

“You know I don’t know what you just said,” he said. He felt a familiar tingling creeping into his fingertips and toes.

She smiled. “You will.”

He blinked and downed the rest of the drink in one swallow. “ _ Við sofum eins og dautt fólk í kvöld. _ ”

Her smirk turned into a smile, her eyes almost threatening. As a deep hum came to life in Atreus’ ears, he thought heard her whisper, “ _ Sigurvegarar sofa ekki. _ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, folks, no one is sorrier than I am for the long delay and short, non-sequitur of this chapter. Life has been aggressively intrusive on my writing routines lately. I have a couple long flights coming up, so I'm hoping to get back on track a bit more, but I can't and don't want to make promises.
> 
> If you speak Icelandic or Scots Gaelic and are super offended, I am indefensible and very sorry. If you don't, Google can help you...I hope.


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